LXXXVIII. 

 OTIS TARDA, (linn.) 



Bustard. 



This fine bird, wliich the gun or the spread of cultivation 

 have either destroyed or driven from our shores, will soon be 

 remembered only as once having existed in our land, glad- 

 dening, with its numbers, the open wolds and downs of our 

 country, and spreading life and activity over the otherwise 

 desolate and uninteresting heath. They have existed till 

 within a few years on those extensive sheep walks, the wolds 

 of Yorkshire, from whence I have seen their eggs ; and in 

 the earlier time of Montague were to be met with on the 

 plains of Salisbury, but are now, I fear, limited entirely to 

 the county of Norfolk, upon the open fields of which a sad 

 remnant of them yet exists. C. W. Spurgeon, Esq., of Lynn, 

 to whom I am indebted for the rare egg figured, gives me the 

 following information : — He says, " I am much afraid that 

 all the male birds are extinct in this kingdom, and, therefore, 

 a few years will end this species altogether. I have seen 

 fourteen to eighteen females in the various large fields in the 

 west of Norfolk, called breaks ; they are very wild and diffi- 

 cult of approach." 



The Bustard makes no nest, but lays its eggs, two in num- 

 ber, upon the bare ground. 



