30 Struthionidce. 



pouch, and was much disappointed to find that all the soft parts 

 required had been irrecoverably destroyed. Mr. Leadbeater, 

 however, ascertained that it was a young male, in the second 

 year only, and it was without the whiskers so conspicuous in the 

 adult male. In all probability, therefore, it would have had 

 no gular pouch. Though in a poor emaciated condition when 

 captured, it weighed 13J lb., and measured from tip to tip 

 of the wings 6 feet 3 inches. How so large, powerful, 

 and pugnacious a bird should suffer itself to be mastered by 

 a boy of tender age, seems strange at first sight ; but if we take 

 into account the broken leg (the wound in which seemed to be a 

 stale one of some days' standing), and its consequent exhaustion 

 from loss of blood, and if we suppose the boy to have caught 

 hold of the left wing, on the same side as the broken leg, we can 

 easily conceive how the bird was rendered powerless, and could 

 not recover itself to offer resistance. How it came by the broken 

 leg has been also much disputed, the limb not being shattered as 

 if by shot, but the bone broken off as if by ball, and the fracture 

 being too high up to have been caused by a trap. Mr. Yarrell 

 suggested the probability of the accident occurring by the bird 

 getting its leg entangled among the bars of a sheep-hurdle, and 

 making efforts to get loose ; but ever since I gained intelligence 

 of the keeper's shot with a cartridge, I have come to the conclu- 

 sion that that shot took effect, and that the bird so fired at, and 

 that caught subsequently by the little boy, were one and the 

 same ; and therefore Henswood (the scene of the keeper's shot) 

 being in Wiltshire, I claim this bird as a bond fide Wiltshire 

 specimen, though I own it was so misguided as to cross the border 

 to die just within the county of Berks. I am happy to add that, 

 by Mr. Marsh's desire, I purchased this specimen for his collection, 

 though at the high price of 20, and it may now be seen with the 

 rest of his birds in the museum at Salisbury.* And now we pass 

 by an interval of fifteen years during which no trace exists of the 



* See Mr. Yarrell's account of the capture of this specimen in the Zoolo- 

 gist for 1856, p. 4995 ; and further particulars communicated by me in th e 

 sa me A olume, p. 5061. 



