102 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



behind it had not yet been invaded by holiday-makers and 

 excursionists. 



It was the same elsewhere in England. So long as 

 the great heaths and moorlands were lonely and quiet the 

 Bustards laid eggs and hatched out their little ones, and 

 lived on year after year, generation after generation, in 

 the same favourite places. 



Newmarket Heath, in Cambridgeshire, was a famous 

 haunt of this fine bird ; another was Royston Heath 

 on the Hertfordshire border. No better home also 

 could there have been for it than the Wiltshire downs, 

 before the manoeuvring of troops and the echoing roar 

 of artillery came to scare him. Likewise, too, the 

 dry wolds of Yorkshire, the "brecks" and heaths of 

 Norfolk, the uplands of Dorsetshire, and the Berkshire 

 downs. 



From all these places it has gone now. For the stray 

 Bustards which are mentioned in the newspapers, from 

 time to time, as being seen in this or that neighbourhood, 

 are only visitors. And they, alas ! are nearly always 

 shot. 



Here is an account of an impromptu Bustard hunt 

 in the year 1751. It is in a book called Anecdotes 

 of Cranhourn Chace, written by a clergyman. He says : 

 " I was shooting dotterels near Winterslow Hut, when 

 the report of my gun disturbed twenty-five Bustards, 

 which flew away quietly over the hill called Southern 

 Hill. 



" I followed them on horseback, and came upon them 

 nearly within shot. ... As they rose, the noise of their 

 wings frightened my horse, which I was leading ; he started 

 back, threw me down, and ran away. As soon as I got 

 upon my knees, I fired at the birds, but they had got out 



