2Qo THE RETURN OF THE GREAT BUSTARD 



there throughout the year, in the midst of high cultiva - 

 tion, and maintains itself, by its own wary habits, 

 without legal protection, amongst a population who 

 are very ready to kill it by any means, however un- 

 sportsmanlike. Some of these devices are almost 

 identical with those used in Norfolk, water in hot 

 weather taking the place of corn or turnips as a bait 

 for the birds, which are shot from ambush. To the 

 fair sportsman it offers the opportunity of stalking it 

 with a rifle, or ' driving '; for though slow to rise it has 

 a powerful flight, and the stories of its former capture 

 in this country by means of grayhounds are generally 

 discredited. Lord Lilford has seen them within sight 

 of the Giralda of Seville from the beginning of February 

 till the end of September. ' In February flocks, varying 

 in number from eight or ten to sixty or more, are to be 

 seen on all the pasture and corn lands of the district, 

 especially on the right of the Guadalquivir, a few miles 

 above Seville, a country of rolling down-land, for the 

 most part under cultivation.' This ground very closely 

 corresponds with the conditions of most of the Berk- 

 shire and Wiltshire Downs, and is more highly 

 cultivated than that part of Salisbury Plain which is 

 passing into the hands of the War Office. The birds 

 are so far from disliking cultivated land that they nest 

 in the young wheat in the great alluvial plains of the 

 lower Guadalquivir, just as they did by preference in 



