374 



6 



the case of the Bustard to have been regarded as a dead letter), and carried by him to his master 

 or mistress. If they were not chilled by the time they reached the farmhouse they were probably 

 put under a sitting hen ; for all persons seemed to imagine, till they tried, that the rearing of 

 young Bustards was as easy as the rearing of young Turkeys. If, however, there was no hope of 

 success in this direction, they appear often to have been preserved as natural curiosities, to lie, 

 with grotesquely shaped flints and petrified Echini (the 'fairies' loaves' of the district) on the 

 parlour mantelpiece or bookshelf till they met with the usual fate of such fragile articles, though 

 some four or five specimens are known to have escaped all such risks and are actually still in 

 existence. But in either of these cases the result was the same. 



" No young birds grew up to fill the gaps made in the ranks of the old ones according to 

 the common course of nature, to say nothing of those caused by occasional violent deaths ; for 

 although Mr. Hamond (following the example of his father before him) and most of his neigh- 

 bours allowed no molestation of the Bustards on their estates, yet there is little doubt that every 

 now and then one fell to the gun, or was caught in the gin of a depredator, while the smaller 

 proprietors were by no means actuated by any feelings for the perpetuation of the stock, and a 

 few of the larger ones occasionally wished to supply themselves or their friends with specimens 

 for their collections or even for edible purposes. Not a thought of the extermination of the 

 species seems to have passed through their minds. Either they were entirely indifferent about 

 the matter, or else they believed that since, as long as they could remember, there had always 

 been Bustards on their brecks, therefore Bustards there would always be. Several of the speci- 

 mens thus obtained still exist in various collections ; and an enumeration of them, with all the 

 particulars of their history now to be obtained, will conclude this notice. It is to be remarked 

 that cock birds are said to have been comparatively scarce in this drove, three being the most 

 that are spoken to by any eye-witness, and, as has just been stated, when the numbers of the 

 drove were much diminished, cocks were entirely wanting. These observations probably refer to 

 the old cocks, which so greatly surpass the hens in size ; for it must be remembered that, as is 

 known through foreign observers, the male Bustard is several years in attaining its full growth, 

 and until then it cannot be readily distinguished from the female at a distance." 



The last reappearance of the Bustard in England took place in 1870, when one or more 

 small flocks visited our country, and examples were procured in Northumberland, Middlesex, 

 Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire. Mr. Cecil Smith, in exhibiting one of the specimens, 

 obtained in the last-named county, before the Somerset Archaeological and Natural-History 

 Society, stated that the flock out of which it was shot " appeared on the Braunton Burrows, near 

 Barnstaple, on the 31st December, 1870; the flock consisted of eight, and was first observed in 

 a field near Croyde, where two were killed and one wounded. The remainder of the flock then 

 alighted near some boys who were sliding close to Braunton, who pelted them with stones, upon 

 which the birds flew off, and were not heard of for some days. Subsequently, I believe, the flock 

 was seen near Holsworthy, not very far from the border of Cornwall ; but none were obtained 

 there. Of course, so extraordinary an occurrence as that of eight Great Bustards was not passed 

 over in silence by the local press. Accordingly Mr. Gatcombe, who went to Barnstaple on 

 purpose to glean particulars of the event, quotes in the ' Zoologist' the following paragraph from 

 the ' North Devon Journal' : — ' Wildfowl. During Christmas week a flock of eight Wild Turkeys 



