OEDEE II. 

 CUESOEES. 



RUNNING BIRDS. 



ALL the gallinse run, some of them very swiftly, and 

 many other birds are fleet-footed ; so that " running " is by 

 no means a very distinctive epithet. Eunning is, however, 

 the principle motion of this order; and there are some very 

 important species, such as the ostrich and the emu, that can- 

 not fly. Two species only can be at all considered as British 

 birds; these ure the bustards, the one resident, but exceed- 

 ingly confined in locality, and few in number; the other, one 

 of our rarest straggling visitants. 



GREAT BUSTARD (OtlS tarda). 



One is at a loss whether most to deplore the total extinc- 

 tion of the wood grous from the forests of Scotland, or the 

 impending, and as it seems, approaching disappearance of the 

 great bustard from the plains of England. It was once not 

 uncommon in various parts of the country ; and as it is a bird 

 of powerful wing, and can fly to considerable distances, not- 

 withstanding its great weight, it occasionally visited the 

 northern parts of the kingdom. One was shot on the low- 

 lands of Moray in 1803. 



Ten years previous, I saw two birds in the parish of Car- 

 myllie, in Eorfarshire, (a place famous, by the way, for mi- 

 gratory birds, in their passage to Strathmore and the Gram- 



