400 BIEDS OP NORFOLK. [APPENDIX B.] 



"1820. Sept. 7. Mr. Patterson shot 14 part., 1 

 hare, and 1 rabbit, two bustards. Gave away to Mr. 

 Reeve 3 partridges."* 



In regard to the matchless series of Norfolk bustards 

 preserved at Congham House (vol. ii., pp. 33, 34), the 

 details furnished by the late Mr. John Scales, an inti- 

 mate friend of their former owner Mr. Robert Hamond, 

 have now been published (" Trans. Norf. and Norw. 

 Nat. Soc.," iv., pp. 113, 114), and the discrepancies, 

 such as they are, between them and those supplied by 

 Mr. E. J. Moor (" Zoologist," 1870, p. 2024) may be 

 compared. At most they are not very important. Mr. 

 Stevenson, from a paper which he left, seems to have 

 leant towards Mr. Moor's account, which was written 

 forty-six years after he had it from Mr. Hamond ; but 

 that of Mr. Scales was penned thirty-five years after the 

 events recorded, in which he himself took an active part 

 a fact that, letting alone the shorter period during 

 which memory could prove faithless, rather inclines one 

 to put the greater trust in his version. f That there 

 may be slight inaccuracies in each it is more than 

 possible, and Mr. Stevenson has left a note as follows : 



" I have recently conversed with an old keeper, 

 named Cater, now in his 79th year, who was formerly 

 in the service of the Rev. R. Hamond, and remembers 

 Mr. Scales assisting his master to stuff a very fine male 

 bustard, but his impression seems to be that the male 

 bird in the large case was one shot at and wounded by 

 his brother, when flying over Narford field, and which, 

 having crossed the river, was picked up dead on West- 



ft This Mr. Patterson was an American gentleman, and a guest 

 at Holkham. As it was the custom to give game to the tenant on 

 whose farm the shooting was, the name of Reeve shows the locality 

 in which the bustards were killed. 



f The age of the two witnesses at the time of giving their 

 evidence also has to be considered. Scales wrote his testimony in 

 1855, and having been born in 1784, was then sixty-one years old. 

 Moor in 1870 describes himself as having been a boy some " fifty- 

 five years ago." Supposing him then to have been fifteen he 

 would be seventy at the time he gave his testimony in 1870. 

 Besides this, Moor only heard the particulars from Hamond in 

 1824, and does not say that he wrote them down at the time ; 

 whereas Scales must have been thoroughly acquainted with them. 



