Great Bustard. 343 



and we may assume the year 1750 as about the period. My 

 friend, the late Mr. John Dudeny, of this town (Lewes), a 

 shepherd in his youth, and the son of a shepherd, told me that 

 his father, who must have been contemporary with iny grand- 

 father, had also taken part in Bustard-hunting in his youthful 

 days ;' and he adds, ' I have no hesitation in saying that fully- 

 grown birds were hunted down with dogs, though I have never 

 heard it mentioned what kind of dogs were employed/ The 

 next witness I adduce for the hunting of Bustards generally on 

 the ground is the Honourable Eobert Curzon, in his work on 

 'Armenia and Erzeroum.' At p. 145 he says, ' Later in the year 

 I risked my neck by riding as hard as I could tear over the 

 rocky, or rather stony, plains at the foot of the mountains after 

 the Great Bustard. I have more than once knocked some of 

 the feathers out of these glorious huge birds as they ran at 

 a terrible pace, half flying and scrambling before my straining 

 horse, but I never succeeded in killing one, though I have 

 constantly partaken of those which have fallen before more 

 patient gunners, who stalk them as you would a deer, and knock 

 them over with a rifle-ball or swan-shot from behind a stone or 

 bank.' Lastly, Bishop Stanley, in his ' Familiar History of Birds/ 

 tells us, ' The Bustard can fly, but its usual motion is on foot, 

 running with such speed as often to rival a greyhound.' 



For the second opinion, that the young alone were thus 

 coursed with dogs, I first adduce Bewick, who lived when these 

 birds were not yet extinct, and who (one would suppose) could 

 not well have been mistaken as to the method of obtaining them 

 generally adopted by sportsmen ; in his lifelike woodcut of the 

 Great Bustard in his first edition, published in 1800, we see in 

 the background of the picture one of these birds running, pur- 

 sued by greyhounds, and followed by a man on horseback ; and 

 in his subsequent editions, with the descriptions added to the 

 figures, he says, ' They are slow in taking wing, but run with 

 great rapidity, and when young are sometimes taken with grey- 

 hounds, which pursue them with great avidity ; the chase is said 

 to afford excellent diversion.' Mr. Howard Satmders supports 



