342 Struthionidce. 



down by greyhounds, but that such was ever the case has been 

 disputed by many modern ornithologists. For my own part, I 

 do not see how we -can disbelieve the very decided assertions of 

 many trustworthy naturalists when relating the account of a 

 matter with which they must have been familiar ; but it is 

 too much the fashion now to presume that our ancestors were 

 mistaken, and in our conceit we attribute to them as errors what 

 in reality were truths at the time they wrote them, though they 

 may not fall in with our modern experience. Now there are 

 three distinct opinions on this knotty point, each of which has 

 its strenuous supporters: (1) That old and young birds in- 

 discriminately were so hunted by greyhounds ; (2) that the 

 young only were so coursed ; (3) that neither old nor young 

 could ever have been so taken. With regard to the first, that 

 both old and young were hunted down with dogs, Brooks in 

 his 'Ornithology/ in 1771, says of the Bustard in France, 

 near Chalons, 'Sometimes fowlers shoot them as they lie 

 concealed behind some eminence or on a load of straw ; others 

 take them with greyhounds, which often catch them before they 

 are able to rise.' Yarrell, in his article on the Bustard in his 

 ' British Birds/ quotes the Rev. Richard Lubbock for the follow- 

 ing : ' A very fine bird, an old male, is still in preservation as a 

 stuffed specimen at the house of a friend in my neighbourhood, 

 which was taken by greyhounds forty years ago, within three 

 miles of Norwich/ Again, Mark Antony Lower, in his 'Con- 

 tributions to Literature ' (1854), says, ' The South Downs afford 

 a fine field for the naturalist as well as the sportsman. One 

 cannot but regret, however, the extinction of some of the 

 animals which they formerly nourished, particularly that fine 

 indigenous bird the Bustard. The grandfather of the present 

 writer was among the last who joined in the sport, about the 

 middle of the last century, of hunting down the last remains of 

 the species with dogs and bludgeons ;' and in a note which I 

 received from that gentleman in answer to my inquiries, he 

 added, ' My grandfather, John Lower, of Alfriston, was born in 

 1735. He was a boy at the time he went a-hunting Bustards, 



