GKEAT BUSTARD. Otlt tarda. 



ALTHOUGH the progress of civilization has conferred many benefits on this country, it 

 has deprived it of many of its aboriginal inhabitants, whether furred or feathered, the 

 GREAT BUSTARD being in the latter category. 



This splendid bird, although in former days quite a usual tenant of plains and 

 commons, and having been an ordinary object of chase on Newmarket Heath, is now so 

 very rare, that an occasional specimen only makes its appearance at very rare intervals, 

 and is then generally found and shot on Salisbury Plain. In the countries which 

 it still inhabits, it is a most wary bird, and very difficult of approach, being generally shot 

 with rifles after a careful and lengthened chase that rivals deer-stalking in the watchfulness 

 and perseverance that are requisite before the sportsmen can get within shot. They are 

 carried in carts, covered with ordinary farm produce, and having an aperture through 

 which they can aim ; they put on various disguises ; they enact the part of agricultural 

 labourers, plying their work, and gradually slipping towards the wary birds ; they walk 

 behind cows, and, in fine, put into practice every device which their ingenuity, sharpened 

 by experience, can suggest. 



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