GREAT BUSTARD. 449 



size of the glands of the neck seen in the males of Deer 

 during their rutting time. 



The most recent occurrence of the Great Bustard came 

 to my knowledge early in the present year. 



On Thursday, January the 3rd, 1856, as a boy, about 

 nine years of age, was on his way, by the Salisbury road, 

 from Hungerford, in Berkshire, to a lone farm about a 

 mile off, with his brother's dinner at twelve o'clock, he saw 

 a large red bird on the ground, fluttering about near the 

 edge of a piece of turnips. He went close up to it, and 

 observed that it had a broken leg ; he tried to lay hold of 

 it, but the bird " pecked at him, bit his fingers and put 

 out his great wings/' He caught hold of one of them, and 

 dragged the bird along the ground by it for nearly a quarter 

 of a mile to the farm, where a farming man killed it for 

 him, by breaking its neck, that the boy, as he said, might 

 carry it easier. The boy says the bird was quite clean when 

 he first saw it, but that he made it dirty by dragging it 

 along the field. The bird passed by sale through the hands 

 of two or three persons, and came at length into the pos- 

 session of W. H. Rowland, Esq., of Hungerford, who 

 sent it to Mr. Leadbeater, of Brewer Street, to be pre- 

 served. 



Mr. Rowland did me the favour to call upon me on 

 Saturday, the 12th instant, and went with me to Brewer 

 Street that I might see the specimen. Mr. Leadbeater, 

 after the bird was skinned, had examined the inside of the 

 body, and had saved the sexual part in spirit, which showed 

 that it was a young male. The bird appeared to be about 

 eighteen or twenty months old, and was, as I believe, a 

 bird of the season of 1854. The fracture of the bone of 

 the leg, with the skin torn through, about half way between 

 the true heel and the knee, did not appear as if produced 

 by gun shot, nor was there a single perforation in any other 



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