THE GREAT BUSTARD 109 



folly (to put it as mildly as possible) of individuals 

 who have slaughtered these noble game-birds whenever 

 opportunity occurred. In July of the year mentioned 

 a gamekeeper who, surely, of all people, should have 

 been the last to have committed such act was con- 

 victed at Eye, Suffolk, for shooting two bustards during 

 the previous month, and was fined the full penalty for 

 the offence. These birds were two from those imported 

 by Lord Iveagh for breeding purposes, they having 

 strayed away on to a neighbouring estate. Later 

 accounts to hand respecting these interesting strangers 

 state that their numbers have been reduced to four, 

 two males and two females. Thus, even yet, there 

 remains some slight hope that this costly experiment 

 towards the reinstatement of the bustard may meet 

 with a measure of the success it so greatly merits. 



During the Georgian period the bustard roamed at 

 large over certain wild tracts in England, notably on 

 those elevated districts the Yorkshire Wolds, the downs 

 of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and of other southern counties. 

 Parts of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk were also 

 then recognized as favourite haunts of the bustard. 

 Throughout the country, the commencement of the 

 Victorian era marked the total extinguishment of this 

 native race of bustards. 



For the sportsman, as for the naturalist, melancholy 

 interest attaches to the fact that bustards were formerly 

 tolerably plentiful in England, and also to some extent 

 in Scotland. According to Hector Boethius, these birds 

 were resident upon the flat land between the Lammer- 

 muirs and the Tweed in the year 1526. The bustard's 

 proneness to forsake its eggs had attracted attention in 

 those times, Boethius remarking in the quaint language 



