5062 Birds. 



have gleaned with reference to the great bustard whose capture was recorded in the 

 'Zoologist' for February (Zo«d. 4995), though that capture was described by no less 

 a master in Ornithology than Mr. Yarrell. Did it refer to any inferior bird, and had 

 not certain opinions gone abroad that it was a tame one escaped from confinement, I 

 should leave the matter as it is ; but as I am sure that every circumstance, however 

 minute, connected with the occurrence of so noble, so rare and so highly prized a 

 visitant, will be deeply interesting to all my brother ornithologists, and. as, residing 

 not very far from the scene of its appearance, I have been enabled to prosecute very 

 diligent inquiries amongst all those who either saw the bird or had anything to do 

 with it, I shall without further apology proceed to answer what seems to me to be an 

 unfounded report, and to state the few additional facts of its occurrence which have 

 come to my knowledge (first premising that I should have done so a month since had 

 I not for a time become entangled in a web of falsehoods, which some of those near 

 the place of the capture thought fit to weave when they discovered how notorious a 

 visitor they had had, every one seeming desirous of proving that he saw, if he did not 

 help to capture, the bird ; such reports, however, having been diligently sifted, turned 

 out for the most part to be gossip). It has been asserted very positively, by several 

 persons who have examined the bird since it has been in Mr. Leadbeater's hands, that 

 it bears unmistakeable marks of confinement, especially as regards the draggled ap- 

 pearance of the wings and tail ; and I fancy this opinion is not a little confirmed by 

 the mysterious broken leg, no very satisfactory cause for which they have discovered ; 

 but now let me beg attention to a plain statement of the facts of the case. It appears 

 that at the beginning of January (which is the nearest date at which I can arrive) 

 one of Lord Ailesbury's keepers, named King, saw a large bird flying over Henswood, 

 part of Marlborough forest: it was quite alone, and thinking it might be an "eagle" 

 he fired a cartridge at it, though he thought it beyond his reach : as the bird continued 

 its flight, apparently unharmed, he did not suppose he had touched it, but went on his 

 way, thinking no more of the matter. I cannot learn as a positive fact that anything 

 more was seen of a large bird for some days, though there are a great many fables on 

 the subject. And now we come to the time when Mr. Yarrell begins his account, how 

 a little boy found a great bird (proving to be an undoubted great bustard) fluttering 

 on the ground, with its left leg broken ; how, notwithstanding its struggles with beak 

 and wings, he succeeded in seizing it by one wing, and so dragged it along the ground 

 for nearly a quarter of a mile to the farm, where its neck was broken by a labourer; 

 and how the boy affirmed that the bird was quite clean when he first saw it, but that 

 he made it dirty by dragging it along the field. Now, putting all these circumstances 

 together, — the keeper firing a cartridge at a large bird ; the subsequent capture, by a 

 little boy of tender age, of a large powerful and savage bustard, with a broken leg, 

 but with very slight resistance comparatively on its part: taking into account, too, how 

 the wound in the leg of the captured bird appeared to be a stale one, of some days 

 standing; how the limb was not shattered, as if by shot, but the bone broken off", as 

 if by ball (as was the conjecture of some who subsequently saw it), and that " too 

 high up to have been caused by a trap," — may we not reasonably conclude that the 

 bird seen by the keeper was one and the same with that captured by the boy, and that 

 the keeper's cartridge took effect and crippled it, and so rendered it by loss of blood 

 weak and exhausted, and an easy prey to its youthful captor? I confess I can come 

 to no other conclusion, and therefore Henswood (the scene of the keeper's shot) being 

 in Wilts, I lay claim to this bustard as a Wiltshire specimen as well, though I own it 



