22 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



identical in character. One peculiarity in their habits, 

 which does not seem to have attracted much notice 

 before, should here be mentioned. This was the 

 pugnacity of the cocks in the spring. At Elveden a 

 shepherd (at least before the year 1820) on one occasion 

 saw two cock birds fighting, and so intent on the 

 combat were they that he ran up and killed one with 

 his staff. This bird was sent to London to the late 

 Mr. Newton and eaten. Of between fifteen and twenty 

 nests, the situations of which have been more or less 

 precisely pointed out or described by eye-witnesses in 

 the Stow tract, only two were not in rye ;* of these two, 

 one was said to have been on the short rabbit-cropped 

 ling of a warren, and the other in a young plantation 

 of about two years' growth; but, as it was often 

 customary to grow rye between the rows of trees, before 

 they had attained any height, it seems quite possible 

 this had been done here, and in that case the occur- 

 rence would not be so very exceptional. It has been 

 so constantly asserted by various authors that bustards 

 were commonly taken by greyhounds, that the state- 

 ment has become an article of faith among many 

 persons. Whatever the practice may have been in other 

 parts of England, there is certainly no evidence that 

 it was pursued in Norfolk or Suffolk. The Swaffham 

 Coursing Meeting was one of the most celebrated in the 

 whole country, and in the open districts of both counties 

 the sport of coursing was formerly most extensively 

 followed, greyhounds being very generally kept, yet none 

 of the older inhabitants have ever heard, except from 



* Mr. Lubbock (" Fauna of Norfolk," p. 41), speaking of 

 Coulson's attempted feat, says the nest was "in a pea-field" ; but 

 the statement is otherwise uncorroborated, and Lord Albemarle, 

 who was the author's informant, does not seem to have been 

 himself an eye-witness, and may have been misinformed. 



