GREAT BUSTARD. 431 



the Provost of King's College, Cambridge, sent me word 

 that Mr. Townley, the father of the present Mr. Greaves 

 Townley, who lives at Fulbourne, told him that for some 

 years after he first went to live there, Bustards regularly 

 bred on his estate. 



Formerly these birds were plentiful in the open tracts 

 about Newmarket Heath, and till within a few years 

 single individuals have occasionally been seen in that neigh- 

 bourhood. Among other references to Cambridgeshire, I 

 may mention that, in January, 1830, a young male was 

 shot on Shelford Common, and passed into the collection 

 of Mr. Henson, and in December, 1832, a specimen was 

 killed at Caxton, and is preserved in the Museum of the 

 Philosophical Society at Cambridge. A correspondent in 

 the Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi. p. 513, says 

 that the late Duke of Queensberry had three Bustards 

 pinioned on his lawn at Newmarket ; and J. Westall, Esq., 

 had one for a long time in his garden at Risby, in Suffolk. 

 The authors of the Catalogue of the Birds of Norfolk and 

 Suffolk, published in 1827 in the fifteenth volume of the 

 Transactions of the Linnean Society, say, " These noble 

 birds still continue to breed in some of the open parts of 

 both counties, though they are become much scarcer than 

 formerly. The places most frequented by them are West- 

 acre in the former county, and Icklingham in the latter. 

 At both places they are carefully preserved by the pro- 

 prietors. In the summer of 1819, nineteen were observed 

 together at Westacre. We have twice seen a male Bustard 

 in the neighbourhood of Burnham. It suffered itself to 

 be approached to about the distance of a hundred yards, 

 then walked deliberately a few paces, and took wing with- 

 out the least difficulty. In flying it moved its wings 

 slowly, more like a Heron than one of the gallinaceous 

 tribe. Mr. Hady, of Norwich, has more than once sue- 



