24 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



ever, that my friend, Mr. W. H. Roberts, who practised 

 for many years as a surgeon at Feltwell, where he first 

 took up his residence in 1811, informs me that he 

 used frequently to see bustards on the large open 

 fields about Cranwich, though never more than two or 

 three together ; and on riding after them on horseback, 

 they would run a considerable distance before taking 

 wing. 



Mr. Lubbock, referring to the wholesale slaughter 

 committed by that notorious otidicide George Turner, 

 of Wretham, states that on one occasion having placed 

 his big duck- guns so as to command the spot where 

 he had laid food for the bustards, he succeeded in killing 

 seven at one discharge. I have ascertained, however, 

 that this feat, although Turner "tulit honor es," was, 

 after all, not performed by him, but by another person. 

 Mr. E. Abbott, of Parndon, Essex, and formerly of 

 Wretham, thus describes the occurrence in a letter 

 recently received from him, adding at the same time 

 several additional particulars : " I think it was early 

 in the spring of 1812, as far as I can recollect. The 

 guns, four very large ones, had been fixed many days 

 by Turner (the then head keeper at Wretham, where 

 my father was steward and manager), before anything 

 like an opportunity offered of killing more than three or 

 four. When one wild day, returning from Thetford, 

 where I had been sent by my father, I saw with a pocket 

 telescope, which I generally carried, that no less than ten 

 birds were all directly before the guns, and on the very 

 spot where Turner had constantly been wishing to see 



especially so in England. In an interesting paper on this bird 

 by the Eev. A. C. Smith, the author inclines to the belief that 

 the "sport" of coursing bustards was followed "in drizzling wet 

 weather" when "the birds' feathers were soaked in rain" (Wilt- 

 shire Magazine, vol. iii., pp. 141-144). A singularly unsports- 

 manlike practice it would seem ! 



