GREAT BUSTARD. 585 



peak of the Hartz Mountains. To the north stretches a vast" rolling prairie, 

 bounded by low ranges of hills, for the most part covered with oak- and 

 beech-forest. In the middle of this prairie lies the town of Halberstadt, 

 celebrated amongst ornithologists as the seat of Heine's great coUection of 

 birds. Oberamtmann Ferdinand Heine lives in an old mansion which was 

 formerly (in the pre-Napoleonic days) the monastery of St. Burchard, 

 now a Rittergut ; and here he most hospitably entertained me and my son, 

 who, with Dr. Blasius, were expressly invited to take the nest of a Great 

 Bustard, and examine our host's magnificent collection of birds. A carriage 

 and pair met us at the station to drive us up to the nest. We stopped 

 halfway to lunch at another Rittergut, where one of Heine's sons occu- 

 pies himself with farming on a great scale — high farming, said to be carried 

 to the greatest perfection of which it is capable. No hedges are to be 

 seen, and, except on the roadsides and round the villages and baronial 

 halls of the Oberamtmanner, no trees are visible. Rye, wheat, barley, 

 peas, potatoes, and especially beetroot for sugar, grow in fields which 

 may almost be measured by square miles instead of acres. The nest had 

 been discovered four days before, when the bird ran through the low 

 wheat, which was not much more than a foot high, for about fifty yards 

 and then took wing. It was scarcely to be expected that she would sit so 

 close when her neighbourhood was invaded by such a formidable expedi- 

 tion as ours was, and we saw nothing of her, but we soon found the 

 nest, containing three eggs. It was a slight hollow in the midst of the 

 wheat, not more than an inch depressed even in the centre, and occu- 

 pied a space about 18 by 13 inches. A handful of dry grass was all the 

 lining below the eggs, which were warm and slightly incubated. A 

 few miles further on, the ground slightly rises, and trees and roads and 

 villages are much thinner on the ground. This is the best Bustard 

 district, and here in winter flocks of thirty or forty birds are sometimes 

 seen together. The Great Bustard is said to be polygamous, but there 

 does not seem to be any satisfactory evidence of the fact. They do not 

 migrate except in very hard winters. 



The Great Bustard lives almost entirely on vegetable food, the leaves of 

 various plants, the young corn, and seeds of different kinds. The young 

 are said to feed almost exclusively upon insects. The old birds are said 

 occasionally to eat insects and not to refuse a mouse, a hamster, or even 

 a lizard or a frog. In winter the females flock apart from the males. 

 Naumann is of opinion that the Great Bustard is not polygamous, that it 

 pairs early in spring, and that the flocks seen in summer are composed of 

 birds of the year not yet old enough to breed. Although the Bustard has 

 not yet learnt that a waggon may contain a dangerous chasseur, it has 

 convinced itself that a railway-train is a harmless apparition. We passed 

 within thirty yards of a hen Bustard on the line between Kustendji and 



