GREAT BUSTARD. 19 



forty to thirty were usually seen together there in 

 winter.* About this period, however, commenced the 

 practice mentioned of planting trees, and the effect of 

 this agricultural improvement soon became manifest. 

 Indeed the year 1812 may, perhaps, be looked upon as 

 the bustard's " grand climacteric " the turning point 

 of its existence in this locality. None of the witnesses 

 to a later period can speak roundly of such numbers as 

 forty or thirty being seen ; the largest droves spoken 

 to henceforward consisted of twenty-four, and even this 

 may have been as early as the year just mentioned. 

 The late Mr. Newton, of Elveden, with his brother-in- 

 law Mr. Waddington, of Cavenham, and another gentle- 

 man, were riding across Icklingham heath when, at the 

 end of a plantation, they came suddenly on two dozen 

 bustards, which at once took wing and dispersed in all 

 directions. After this time no one speaks of seeing 

 more than eighteen, and as the experience of the 

 different persons questioned draws nearer to the present 

 day, fifteen or fourteen, nine, seven, six, five, three, and 

 two are successively the numbers specified by the various 

 eye-witnesses. Here, too, as in the Swaffham tract, the 

 last survivors are reported to have been hens only. 



Though a considerable amount of protection was 

 accorded to this bird by some of the largest proprietors, 

 the Duke of Grafton, at Euston,f Mr. Newton, at 



* It is of course, in most cases, very difficult to get at the date 

 of any of these occurrences, but in this case it may be approxi- 

 mately reached. The young bustard this man caught was ultimately 

 purchased, he said, by " Lord Paget," who then lived at Wretham. 

 Now this Lord Paget (subsequently the celebrated Marquis of 

 Anglesey) in March, 1812, became Earl of "Oxbridge. It is, there- 

 fore, pretty evident from the name applied to him by the witness, 

 that the fact mentioned must have taken place before the higher 

 title was assumed. 



f Mr. Lubbock states, in 1845, on the authority of a veteran 

 sportsman, Sir John Shelley, " that forty years ago parties used to 

 D 2 



