

THE RETURN OF THE GREAT BUSTARD 289 



good reason to believe that there is no such obstacle to 

 the return of the bustard. 



Anyone willing to spend money and trouble on such 

 an experiment would wish to know whether the bird is 

 found flourishing elsewhere in conditions like those in 

 which it would find itself in the England of to-day ; 

 and secondly, whether the causes which led to its final 

 disappearance here were permanent or accidental. For- 

 tunately, there is a very interesting and reliable body of 

 evidence on both these points in the bustard's history. 

 Both the late Lord Lilford and Mr. Abel Chapman 

 attentively studied the haunts and habits of the bustard 

 in Spain ; and the late Mr. Stevenson delayed for a 

 long time the publication of his second volume of * The 

 Birds of Norfolk' to write a complete, and incidentally 

 most charming, account of the facts connected with the 

 * decline and fall ' of the same birds in their last home 

 in Norfolk. There was no authority, from Mr. Alfred 

 Newton to the ' shepherd's pages ' of Icklingham Heath, 

 from whom Mr. Stevenson did not gather facts first 

 hand as to the disappearance of our largest bird. And 

 the inference from his account is, with one exception, 

 not unfavourable to its restoration. 



At present it is an exceedingly common bird in 

 Southern Spain. Its numbers are probably reinforced 

 by migrants from the higher and colder central districts 

 of La Mancha and Old Castile ; but it also remains 



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