NA JURE . NOTES 
I 2 
late Mr. Tristram Valentin, who states that on one occasion a 
man (the name is withheld from execration) is said to have 
succeeded in killing no fewer than seven at one discharge, the 
birds being presented to the Prince of Wales (George IV.), the 
Duke of York, and others. And we are sorry to say that the 
gifts are reported to have had the effect, in some degree, of 
procuring the berth of head gamekeeper at Windsor for the son 
of this arch bustard-slayer. A more modest reward, gained by 
an equally felonious person in 1530 is thus recorded by the same 
writer: “ Itm in reward the XXVth day of July to Baxter’s 
Svnt of Stannewgh for bryngyng of ij yong busterds ijd.” The 
worst is that no chance has ever been given to the bird to 
reinstate itself, which it would doubtless have done with great 
pleasure and ease under favourable circumstances if permission 
had been given. 
It is greatly to be hoped that Lord Walsingham’s experiment 
will enable us to again observe this fine fowl, which Gilbert 
White thought as impressive in a landscape as fallow deer. 
This, however, seems very improbable, since the Wilts and 
Devizes Gazette of July 18, igoi, mentions that of the seventeen 
great bustards recently brought over by Lord Walsingham ten 
had already been wantonly shot. The destroyer of the tenth, a 
gamekeeper, one need hardly add, had been convicted and fined. 
It was mentioned in the same report that Lords Walsingham 
and Iveagh were doing all they could to protect the bustards, 
but not with very great success, one would fear. The fate of 
all large, scarce, unfamiliar, beautiful wild creatures is to be 
pitilessly slaughtered, and laws are powerless to protect them in 
the present state of public morals. 
(Dr.) A. J. H. Crespi. 
Cooma, Wimborne. 
THIS IS THE FOREST PRIMEVAL. 
By the Editor. 
Lives of the Hunted. By Ernest Seton-Thompson (Nutt). 
The Great Deserts and Forests of North America. By Paul Fountain 
(Longmans). 
The World of the Great Forest. By Paul Du Chaillu (Murray). ^ 
To us who live in the heart of a country long ago reduced to 
the extremity of artificiality there is something inexpressibly 
refreshing in a reminder that there are yet unenclosed tracts of 
desert and forest, the homes of a truly wild flora and fauna. 
The object of the Selborne Society is very much that which Mr. 
Seton-Thompson in his preface states as that of his own 
writings, not primarily — excellent though that object be — the 
