452 CLASS AVES. 



rearing, fetch a very high price, half a guinea being given 

 sometimes for one of the former, and ten or twelve guineas 

 for a brace of the latter. But that they were formerly plen- 

 tiful here, seems pretty certain ; and they are among the 

 number of birds which are mentioned as constitviting the de- 

 licacies of the tables of great men. All these facts are very 

 unfavourable to M. Riocourt's conjecture respecting their 

 periodical migrations, which, indeed, we think, may be very 

 safely dismissed as a totally untenable hypothesis. It seems 

 to be universally true that the bustards attach themselves to 

 the countries in which they have been born ; and such changes 

 of place as an inclement winter and long continued snow may 

 sometimes force them to make, cannot, with any propriety, 

 be considered as genuine migrations. 



Besides the plants, grains, insects, and worms, on which 

 the bustards are said commonly to feed, it is pretended that, 

 though chiefly granivorous, they will eat field mice, frogs, 

 toads, and small lizards, and in the time of snow, the bark of 

 trees, and the leaves of cabbage and turnips. It is also said, 

 that, like the ostrich, they will swallow small stones and 

 pieces of metal. 



In the season of reproduction, the male goes strutting about 

 the female, and makes a kind of wheel with the tail. These 

 birds are polygamous, and after fecundation the females live 

 alone. They lay in the month of May, in a hole in the 

 ground, in a field of rye or wheat, two, and sometimes three 

 eggs, on which they sit for about thirty days. They will, 

 however, abandon them immediately, if they have been 

 touched during any of their occasional absences in search of 

 food. These eggs are about as large as those of a goose, and 

 of an olive brown, with spots of a deeper shade. The young, 

 Avhich leave the nest the moment they are excluded, are 

 covered with a white down. They are sometimes domesti- 

 cated. 



