The Great Bustard 24.7 
especially pointers, are employed upon this quest when the 
mother-bustards, being reluctant to leave their young, lie as close 
as September partridges in a root-crop; while the broods, either 
too terrified or too immature to fly, are frequently caught by the 
dogs. We regret that there are those who actually descant with 
pride upon having slaughtered a dozen or more of these helpless 
creatures in a day; while others are only restrained from a like 
crime by the scorching solar heats of that season. 
More bustards are killed thus than by all the other methods 
combined—a hundred times more than by our scientific and sports- 
manlike system of driving presently to be described. 
Except for this unworthy massacre of mothers with their 
broods in summer, and the two clumsy artifices before mentioned, 
the bustards are left practically unmolested—their wildness and 
the open nature of their haunts defy all the strategy of native 
fowlers. The hen-bustard deposits her eggs—usually three, but 
on very rare occasions four—-among the green April corn; 
incubation and the rearing of the young take place in the 
security of vast silent stretches of waving wheat. The young 
bustards grow with that wheat, and, ere it is reaped (unless 
prematurely massacred), are able to take care of themselves. A 
somewhat more legitimate method of outwitting the great bustard 
is practised at this season. During harvest, while the country 
is being cleared of crops, the birds become accustomed to see 
bullock-carts daily passing with creaking wheel to carry away the 
sheaves from the stubble to the era, or levelled threshing-ground, 
where the grain is trodden out, Spanish fashion, by teams of mares. 
The loan of a carro with its pair of oxen and their driver having 
been obtained, the cart is rigged up with estéras—that is, 
esparto-matting stretched round the uprights which serve to hold 
the load of sheaves in position. A few sacks of straw thrown on 
the floor of the cart save one, in some small degree, from the 
merciless jolting of this primitive conveyance on rough ground. 
Two or three guns can find room therein, while the driver, lying 
forward, directs the team with a goad. 
This moving battery fairly resembles a load of sheaves, and 
well do we remember the terrible, suffocating heat we have 
endured, shut up for hours in this thing during the blazing days 
of July and August. The result, nevertheless, repays all suffering. 
We refer to no mere cynegetic pride but to the enduring joy of 
