Great Bustard. 357 



was no more. Probably there are few, if any, now living in the 

 county who can recollect having seen the native Bustard on 

 Salisbury Plain, though many must have listened over and over 

 again to the tidings which their fathers and grandfathers gave of 

 their experiences with this noble species, even as I have heard 

 my father-in-law, the late Rev. T. T. Upwood, recount how some- 

 where about the year 1820, and on his own estate in Norfolk, he 

 came unexpectedly upon a pack of seven or eight of these huge 

 birds, and was probably one of the last in the kingdom to fire 

 upon so large a flock. He must not, however, be branded as an 

 oticide, perhaps in the eyes of some as odious an appellation as 

 that of regicide, or even vulpecide ! for however anxious his 

 desire to secure a specimen for his collection, and though 

 generally an unerring shot, he was so unnerved by the sudden 

 uprising of so many great birds, and the noise of so many wings, 

 that he clean missed with both barrels, and the flock was gone, 

 and never found again. 



It was at about this date that a story, which I believe is 

 authentic, was told of a well-known sportsman not a hundred 

 miles from Codford, in the south of this county, who had invited 

 a party of neighbours to shoot partridges on his well-stocked 

 estate on the 1st of September. But, as it chanced, he had two 

 nephews staying with him at the time, who he thought would be 

 a hindrance to the day's sport if they accompanied him : so, to 

 employ them in another direction, he bade them take their guns 

 and go out on the Plain ' Bustard-shooting ;' with which they in 

 their simplicity at once acquiesced, to the no small amusement 

 of the uncle and his friends. But when the partridge-shooters 

 returned at the end of the day's sport to the house of the host* 

 they found the two lads had already arrived ; and to the ironical 

 inquiry of the uncle, 'Well, boys, what sport have you had 

 Bustard-shooting?' they replied, ' Oh, pretty fair ; we followed a 

 good many, and succeeded in killing two.' At this there was a 

 general laugh, as the sportsmen speculated what birds the lads 

 could have found ; and to satisfy their curiosity, though without 

 a suspicion of the truth, both uncle and friends followed the 



