GREAT BUSTARD. 419 



1832, and carried off her young- ones. This nest was upon 

 a warren, but it is most commonly placed in rye. Mr. 

 Elwes shot a female to a pointer in a turnip field at 

 Congham in the autumn of 1831. The continuation of 

 these notes is as follows : " I know one instance of a 

 specimen killed on the contrary side of Norfolk to that 

 which they generally affect. About ten years ago a 

 person returning home in the parish of Palling, upon the 

 coast, near Winterton, saw an immense bird walking in a 

 marsh by the road side. He rode home, brought his gun, 

 and shot it ; it proved to be a male Bustard of the second 

 year, and is now in the collection of Mr. Postle, a near 

 relation of mine. This is exactly the opposite part of the 

 county to that in which they are generally found. When 

 a boy I remember two or three individuals in a domesticat- 

 ed state. I recollect one of these birds swallowing, in an 

 instant, a thin leather glove which I dropped. The system 

 of weeding out corn in the spring has tended perhaps more 

 than any other cause to the decrease of Bustards ; since 

 egg collectors became numerous, a nest is a valuable prize 

 indeed. A very fine bird, an old male, is still in preser- 

 vation, 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." Among the extracts 

 from the Household Book, A.D. 1519 et seq., for which I 

 am, as before mentioned, under the article Pheasant, at 

 page 316, also indebted to the Rev. Richard Lubbock, are 

 the following : " July 25th, a reward to Baxter for bring- 

 ing two young Bustards ; " and " Item, a Bustard and a 

 Hernsewe kylled with ye crosbowe." I have been favoured 

 by Thomas Bond, Esq., of the Temple, with extracts from 

 Dugdale^s * Origines Juridiciales, which, as exhibiting 



* I am indebted to another very kind friend for an extract from Dugdale's 



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