GREAT BUSTARD. 581 



OTIS TARDA. 

 GREAT BUSTARD. 



(PLATE 22.) 



Otis otis, Briss. Orn. v. p. 18 (1760). 



Otis tarda, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 264 (1766) ; et auctortun plurimorum Latham, 



Temminck, Naumann, Dresser, Sounders, &c. 

 Otis major, Brehm, Vog. Deutschl. p. 531 (1831). 



" Once upon a time," as the story-books say, the Great Bustard was a 

 resident in the British Islands. It must always have been an extremely 

 local bird in this country, as it is exclusively a bird of the steppes, seldom 

 or never found near trees. In the days of long ago, before the forests 

 were cut down, the steppe country of England was probably confined to 

 four districts the Merse of Berwickshire across the Scottish border ; the 

 Yorkshire and Lincolnshire wolds; the warrens or "brecks"* of Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire ; and the downs of Dorset, Wilts, Hampshire, 

 and Sussex, including Salisbury Plain. The earliest account of the Great 

 Bustard in the British Islands is to be found in ' A History of Scotland/ 

 published in the year ] 526 by Hector Boece or Boethius. He describes this 

 bird, which he calls " the Gustard," as being as great as a Swan, but in colour 

 of feathers and taste of flesh differing little from a Partridge ; and breeding 

 on the lowlands of the Merse in Berwickshire, a district a hundred thousand 

 acres in extent, which may be regarded as the Salisbury Plain of Scotland. 

 On the Yorkshire wolds the last specimen was supposed (Eagle Clarke, 

 ' Handbook Vert. Fauna of Yorkshire/ p. 65) to have been killed about 

 the year 1830 ; but on the neighbouring wolds of Lincolnshire it had 

 probably become extinct about the commencement of the present century 

 (Cordeaux, ( Birds of the Humber District/ p. 83). The heathy warrens 

 of the eastern counties, with their adjoining wheat-lands, appear to have 

 been the last breeding-place of this fine bird in the British Islands. It is 

 believed that the last male was destroyed in 1838 ; but females lingered 

 on until 1845 (Stevenson, 'Birds of Norfolk/ ii. p. 15). The latest 

 reliable information of the existence of the Bustard on the Downs appears 



* The word steppe is derived from some old English word signifying " wide-stretching." 

 The Merse may possibly mean the "March" or boundary-line between England and 

 Scotland. The word breck has the same origin as the German word " Brach," a fallow or 

 broken ground. A dotcn (the same as a dune or sand-hill) means a range of hills near the 

 sea without trees upon it. A wold now has almost the same meaning, a range of naked 

 hills, but is evidently derived from the same root as the German " Wald," a forest. 



