GREAT BUSTARD. 63 



Like most of the gallinaceous birds, the bustard makes no 

 nest, but drops her eggs on the bare ground. These are only- 

 two in number, produced rather early in the season, and 

 requiring four -weeks' incubation. The young are of a pale 

 yellowish brown, mottled with darker and black, and follow 

 their parent as soon as they break the shell The female sits 

 dose during her incubation, and cannot be raised without 

 cLLfiiculty; the young ones also squat close down upon the 

 ground on the appearancfc of danger. 



Independently altogether of its size, and the quality of its 

 flesh, which is highly prized, the bustard is a very interesting 

 bird. But unfortunately it is one of which the recorded 

 history is exceedingly fabulous, and it is now so rare, that it 

 is not easy to correct the errors and supply the defects. 



The bustard does not come very accurately into any of the 

 orders into which systematists arrange the winged tribes. 

 It cannot, with any regard to natural character, be classed 

 with the grallse, because the bustard never wades, but 

 keeps the open and dry plains, and seldom drinks. As little 

 can it be classed with the cursores, or running birds, though 

 we have placed it there, for want of a more appropriate 

 niche. Its most powerful motion is not running, but flight, 

 for which, heavy as it is, its large wings well adapt it. That 

 it can walk well and run swiftly is true, but it combines 

 these with the power of flight in a degree much superior to 

 any other very large bird. The bustard combines so many 

 characters, that it stands alone, in structure as well as in 

 locality, different from any other genus. The circumscription 

 of its haunts, as a British bird, and the decrease of its 

 numbers in those haunts are, on that account, doubly to be 

 regretted. Though not, like the African ostrich, a bird of 

 the desert, it is naturally a bird of bleak and desolate places ; 

 and therefore a natural decay in its numbers may have been 

 occasioned by the different system of agriculture which has 



