NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



for table purposes. Between 1802 and 1808 the same 

 practice was resorted to by Mr. George Hardy, House 

 Sjurgeon to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the eggs 

 being collected from different parts of Norfolk. 



It is somewhat singular that, notwithstanding these 

 and other efforts, no person has yet succeeded in per- 

 petuating the race of great bustards as domesticated 

 birds. The turkey and the guinea fowl, one may say 

 even the pheasant, are instances of perfect success in 

 this enterprise during the last two hundred years. 

 Why has the bustard not been thus successfully tamed? 

 It is difficult to say. Some years ago the Acclimatisa- 

 tion Society of Paris, says Mr. Harting, offered prizes 

 for the successful domestication of the great bustard, 

 ''one of the conditions being that the birds should be 

 proved to have laid and hatched eggs in confinement." 

 Attempts were made, and incubation was accomplished, 

 but the experiment, as with those in this country, seems 

 to have ended in failure. 



Some three or four years back Lord Walsingham 

 attempted, at very considerable expense, to reintroduce 

 the wild bustard into this country again. No less than 

 seventeen great bustards were imported and turned 

 down in the eastern counties. In 1901, at the prosecu- 

 tion of a neighbouring gamekeeper for shooting two 

 of these birds, the keeper of Lord Iveagh, on whose 

 estate the bustards were enlarged, stated that only 

 seven of the seventeen were then surviving. Every 

 effort had been made to protect them, printed notices 

 had been distributed, and the aid of local papers en- 

 listed. Unfortunately, however, the birds, as soon as 

 the wings, which had in the first instance been clipped, 

 grew again, took long flights over the surrounding 

 country — in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire — 

 and it was found a matter of impossibility to protect 



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