The Great Bustard 247 



especially pointers, are employed upon this quest when the 

 mother-bustards, being reluctant to leave their young, lie as close 

 as September partridges in a root-crop ; while the broods, either 

 too terrified or too immature to fly, are frequently caught by the 

 dogs. We regret that there are those who actually descant with 

 pride upon having slaughtered a dozen or more of these helpless 

 creatures in a day ; while others are only restrained from a like 

 crime by the scorching solar heats of that season. 



More bustards are killed thus than by all the other methods 

 combined — a hundred times more than by our scientific and sports- 

 manlike system of driving presently to be described. 



Except for this unworthy massacre of mothers with their 

 broods in summer, and the two clumsy artifices before mentioned, 

 the bustards are left practically unmolested — their wildness and 

 the open nature of their haunts defy all the strategy of native 

 fowlers. The hen-bustard deposits her eggs — usually three, but 

 on very rare occasions four — among the green April corn ; 

 incubation and the rearing of the young take place in the 

 security of vast silent stretches of waving wheat. The young- 

 bustards grow with that wheat, and, ere it is reaped (unless 

 prematurely massacred), are able to take care of themselves. A 

 somewhat more legitimate method of outwitting the great bustard 

 is practised at this season. During harvest, while the country 

 is being cleared of crops, the birds become accustomed to see 

 bullock-carts daily passing with creaking wheel to carry away the 

 sheaves from the stubble to the era, or levelled threshing-ground, 

 w^iere the grain is trodden out, Spanish fashion, by teams of mares. 

 The loan of a carro with its pair of oxen and their driver having 

 been obtained, the cart is rigged up with esteras — that is, 

 esparto-matting stretched round the uprights which serve to hold 

 the load of slieaves in position. A few sacks of straw thrown on 

 the floor of the cart save one, in some small degree, from the 

 merciless jolting of this primitive conveyance on rough ground. 

 Two or three guns can find room therein, while the driver, lying- 

 forward, directs the team with a goad. 



This moving battery fairly resembles a load of sheaves, and 

 well do we remember the terrible, suifocating heat we have 

 endured, shut up for hours in this thing during the blazing days 

 of July and August. The result, nevertheless, repays all suffering. 

 We refer to no mere cynegetic pride but to the enduring joy of 



