instead of being met with in flocks of forty or fifty birds, it 
is a circumstance of rare occurrence that a single individual 
is now seen. 
/■ 
In the spring of 1814, we saw five birds on the extensive 
plains between Thetford and Brandon, in Norfolk ; from 
which neighbourhood, in 1819, we received a sinirle eiro-, 
which had been found in an extensive warren. In the 
autumn of 1819, a large male bird was sold in Leadenhall 
Market for five guineas, which had been surprised by a dog 
on Newmarket Heath, and in the same year a female was 
captured, under similar circumstances, on one of the moors 
in Yorkshire. . 
«- 
'I 
Our figure was drawn from a male bird taken alive on 
Salisbury Plain, in the year 1797, it lived about three years 
in confinement, and though a female was procured from the 
Continent she never laid while confined. They devoured 
turnip, cabbage, and lettuce leaves, also the blades of young 
corn ; during the winterthey were fed with grain, which they 
always preferred when soaked in water, they would likewise 
devour worms and slugs. 
The female deposits her eggs (two in number) in a hole 
in the ground, without any appearance of nest; and she sits 
on the eggs about thirty days ; the young run about as soon 
as excluded, but they do not fly for many months. The 
eggs are of a dull olivaceous brown, with darker and ash 
coloured spots. 
The speed of the Bustard is almost equal to that of a 
