2510 The Zoologist — March, 1871. 



Immigration of the Great Bustard. 



(Continued from Zool. S. S. 2477.) 



[I HAVE received a number of communications on this interesting 

 subject : some of them are headed " Private," and thei'efore I may not 

 print them : the facts contained in the others are, I believe, incorporated 

 in the communications printed below, from which it appears that two addi- 

 tional specimens have been killed — one on Salisbury Plain, the other at 

 Instow. — E. Newman.] 



In Northumberland. — As the occurrence of a great bustard in 

 Northuniberland, recorded in the last number of the 'Zoologist' 

 (S. S. 2473), is mentioned without the date when the bird was 

 obtained, I applied for this information to the purchaser of the 

 specimen, Mr. Henry Gregson, of Low Lynn, near Beal, Northum- 

 berland, who has been so good as to inform me that it was a 

 female bird, and was shot on the 2nd of January last by a man 

 named William Harvey, at Fenhara, on the coast of Northumber- 

 land, about ten miles from Berwick-on-Twecd ; also that the 

 specimen is now in the possession of Mr. Valentine Knight, of 

 Folkestone, for whom it was purchased by Mr. Gregson. — J. H. 

 Gurneij ; Marldon, Totiies, February 13, 1871. 



Ill Devonshire. — My father writes to me from Instow that he 

 recently had some conversation with a gentleman who had been 

 invited to sup off a great bustard, so that it is really a fact that the 

 third of the Braunlon bustards was doomed to the spit. The flesh 

 of the bird was described as very good, and dark like that of a 

 hare. The bird which met this ignominious fate was shot on wing, 

 and fell with a broken pinion, and is said to have been one of a 

 flock of eight. — Murray A. Mathew; The Vicarage, Bishop's 

 Lydeard, January 29, 1871. 



[Instow is a parish in Devonshire, about four miles N.N.E. of Bideford 

 and S. of the joint estuary of the Taw and Torridge. Braunton, where the 

 flock of eight bustards was seen, is on the north bank of the same estuary. 

 — E. Newman.'] 



In Wiltshire. — You will be interested to learn that two great 

 bustards were seen on Thursday, the 26th of January, at Berwick 

 St. James, near Mr. Eilysman C. Piuckney's house. Mr. Pinckney 

 and two of his men went in pursuit, and his bailiff, Liudsey, 

 succeeded in shooting one of the birds with a bullet; the other 



