194 OTID1D.E. 



Aristotle, Athenaeus, Belon, Oppian, Pliny,* and Plutarch ; 

 but for the purposes of the present work it will suffice to 

 consider more recent authorities, especially those who treat 

 of the former existence of this magnificent "bird in our own 

 islands. In the melancholy task of tracing the gradual 

 extirpation of the largest of the indigenous British species, 

 recourse has been had to the stores of information published 

 by Mr. W. E. Clarke (Handbk. Yorkshire Vertebrates), and 

 particularly by Mr. H. Stevenson (Birds of Norfolk, ii. pp. 

 1-42), and the latter in his turn has availed himself of the 

 accumulated experiences of Professor Newton and others, 

 who, from long residence in the Bustard-country, were 

 familiar with the bird by tradition and observation. 



With the comparatively peaceful times ushered in by the 

 accession of the Tudor sovereigns, the cultivation and enclo- 

 sure of waste lands made rapid strides incompatible with 

 the welfare of the Great Bustard, but down to the time of 

 Henry VIII. it inhabited all the undulating plains and wolds 

 from the British Channel to the Firth of Forth. An early 

 reference to this bird appears in the Earl of Northumber- 

 land's regulations, in 1512, for his ' Castles of Wresill and 

 Lekin field in Yorkshire,' wherein occurs the observation : 

 " Item, Bustardes for my Lordes own Mees at Principal 

 Feestes ande non other tyme Except my Lordes comaund- 

 ment be otherwyse." The first British author who gave any 

 account of the bird wrote of it at the northern limit of its 

 range, for it is Hector Boethius, who says, in 1526 : 

 " Besides these we have moreover another foule in Mers [the 

 flat land between the Lammermuir Hills and the Tweed], 

 more strange and uncouth than all these afore mentioned, 

 called a Gustard, fully so great as a Swanne, but in colour 

 of feathers and taste of fleshe little differing from a Partriche, 

 howbeit these byrdes are not verie common, neyther to be 

 seene in all places ; suche also is their qualitie, that if 



* Pliny, Hist. Nat. x. cap. 29, says, " Quas Hispania aves tardas appellat, 

 Grraecia otidas." The name Bistard, or Bustard, has generally been accepted as 

 a corruption of the words Avis tarda, indicative of the bird's slowness in taking 

 flight, but to this derivation some recent authorities object. 



