GREAT BUSTARD. 21 



he pulled the string as he had been told to do, and shot 

 two cock birds, weighing twenty-four or twenty-five 

 pounds each. There is evidence, also, of hen bustards 

 having been captured on their nests. Already before 

 1811, Coulson, keeper to Lord Albemarle, had tried 

 ineffectually to throw a casting-net over an old bird at 

 Elveden, as she was sitting, but he was obliged to 

 content himself with taking her eggs and putting them 

 under a hen, when in due time they were hatched, and 

 and the young, being successfully reared, lived in a 

 garden for some time till killed by dogs, which acci- 

 dentally obtained an entrance. But more than ten 

 years later, Mr. Booty, a farmer, at Barnham, performed 

 the feat with greater dexterity at Stow, and carried off 

 the old bustard which he kept in the cheese-room of his 

 farm house. Besides this a gunsmith, at Bury St. 

 Edmund's, is said to have encouraged the destruction of 

 these birds, buying them when brought to him without 

 being particular as to whether they were obtained with 

 the leave of the proprietors or without it, and thus 

 altogether it would seem as if the bustards in this 

 tract of country were more molested than those around 

 Swaffham. To this cause may, perhaps, be attributed 

 their earlier extinction, for while the latter certainly 

 lingered till 1838, there is no trustworthy evidence 

 whatever for believing that the former existed later 

 than 1832, in the autumn of which year Mr. Thornhill, 

 of Riddlesworth, as has been mentioned, had a very 

 good view of one on Icklingham heath, and it may be 

 pretty confidently stated that this was the last time a 

 bustard was observed in that locality. 



As may have been expected, there seems to have 

 been little or no difference in the general habits or 

 mode of nidification of the bustards in these two tracts. 

 They appeared and disappeared at the same periods of 

 the year, and frequented localities as nearly as possible 



