The Bustard. 
265 
making a nest in young corn, and tlie small number 
of the eggs, the hen only laying two at a time, all contri¬ 
buted to its extinction. Its protection lay chiefly in the 
choice which it made for its abode of open country. As 
long as the crossbow was the principal weapon of the 
sportsman, the wide expanse of country oyer which this 
bird could look must have enabled it to see and escape 
danger; but the practice of making small plantations at 
intervals as screens against the force of the wind, which 
was adopted for many years in Norfolk, afforded oppor¬ 
tunities for approach by the hunter, which no amount of 
watchfulness on the part of the unfortunate bird could 
contend against. Mr. Stevenson, in his Birds of Norfolk 
(1866), has an interesting chapter on the bustard, and the 
gradual process of its extermination. 
Shakspeare has no mention of this bird. Coming from 
a part of the country so well wooded as Warwickshire, he 
probably had no opportunity of seeing it in his early days. 
Thomas Muffett tells us that bustards were called by 
the Scots gusestards, that is to say, “ slow geese; ” that they 
fed upon flesh and young lambs out of sowing time, and in 
harvest time on the ripe corn. He says he has seen as 
many as six lying in a wheat-field in the summer 
(Healths Improvement , p. 91, ed. 1655). 
The Crane, now only an occasional visitor to our coasts, 
was once indigenous, frequenting the fens of 
Lancashire and Cambridgeshire in large 
flocks. Drayton, describing the marshes of the former 
county, writes 
“ There stalks the stately crane, as though he*merch’d in war.” 
( Polyolbion , song xxv.) 
By an Act of Parliament (25 Henry VIII., 1533), a fine of 
twenty pence was imposed on every person who should 
“ withdraw, purloin, take, destroy, or convey,” any egg of 
this species. 
