176 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
of them he in a wheat field, fatting themselves (as a Deer will 
doe) with ease and eating; whereupon they grow sometimes 
to such bigness, that one of them weigheth almost fourteen 
pounds.* Now as they are of an extraordimarv bulk, so 
likewise are they of rare nourishment. “ 
In spite of Gesner’s unknown correspondent, we must 
judge the Great Bustard never to have been a very common 
species in the British Isles. It required wide extents of 
open country, not timbered, and there cannot have been a 
great many such districts available apart from the plains 
in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Wiltshire. On Salisbury 
Plain, and also on the wolds of Lincolnshire, and the still 
more extensive high grounds of Yorkshire, and on the downs 
of Sussex, small droves of Bustards, in companies of ten or 
a dozen, lived and flourished for a long time. But although 
they maintained their existence it was far from being in 
unmolested retirement, even at the period of which we are 
writing. T 
There is no indication of the Bustard having ever 
been a native of either Wales or Ireland, while in Scotland 
only one locality was known, and that in the extreme south, 
the Mers (or border district) of Lothian, and here Boece says 
they were few in number. Boece spells the name with a G 
—Gustard, and Muffett Gusetard—but that was merely the 
Scotch way of pronouncing it. The only other Scotch authority 
for the Great Bustard is the “‘ Prodromus Historie Naturalis ” 
(1684) of Sir Robert Sibbald, where we read : 
“ Otis, the slow bird of Aldrovandus. This seems to be 
that which is called Gustard by our writers. In size it is 
fully equal to a turkey. It is said to frequent Merse, and 
I was recently informed that one had been seen in East 
Lothian not long since.” (T'ranslation.)t 
* Old males weigh much more than this, 
+ The last of the native race—or very nearly the last—was shot at 
Lexham in Norfolk, in May, 1838, and was, I believe, seen in the flesh by my 
father, who, in a note made at the time, remarks that the plumage was much 
worn on the back as if the bird had missed its moult (“ Zoologist,” 8.S., 
p. 4724). As it was not likely to have found a mate there could have heen 
small chance of its breeding, even if it had been spared. In 1876 I saw a 
migrant in February at Hockwold in the same county. 
+ As given by Mr. Mullens in “ British Birds,’ Mag., VI., p. 41, and 
compared with a MS. translation in the possession of Mr. H. 8. Gladstone. 
