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weather are often compelled to seek shelter in the more enclosed 
districts from the plains and downs where they usually range. 
A favourite sport of our forefathers seems to have been to hunt 
the bustard with greyhounds, probably trained for the purpose. A 
painting, of which this is the subject, may be seen at Wilton 
House, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke. As an article of food 
the flesh of the bustard was highly esteemed, and on this account, 
combined with its rarity, it always commanded a high price. On 
the 10th of October, 1555, the third year of Phillip and Mary, 
amongst a list of game provided at a feast in the Inner Temple, 
bustards were quoted as costing no less than ten shillings each, a 
large sum at that period. It is also recorded that it was the custom 
many years ago for the mayor of Salisbury to have a bustard as a 
prominent dish at the annual inauguration feast. 
The great bustard is found in France, Germany, Russia, Greece, 
Italy, Dalmatia, the Levant, and is also numerous in Spain. 
Wiltshire is always allowed to have been the stronghold of the 
bustard, and our extensive downs, especially Salisbury Plain were 
known to be its favourite haunts, but as soon as cultivation increased, 
and the downs began to be broken up, the waste lands to be re¬ 
claimed and drained, and the system of hoeing the corn became 
general, the bustard had no alternative but to seek for other more 
congenial quarters. Norfolk and Yorkshire are also noted as 
having possessed favourite haunts of this noble birds; the last 
killed in the former county was shot at Lexham, towards the end 
of the year 1838, whilst as recently as 1849, Mr. G. R. Waterhouse, 
the well-known naturalist of the British Museum, when returning 
to Salisbury with a party of friends from a visit to Stonehenge, 
saw one which from its size he thought was a female,. it was 
seen several times on the wing by the party during an interval of 
eight or ten minutes, and flew with a heavy, though tolerably rapid 
flight, about twenty feet from the ground, was very wild, and 
would not suffer itself to be approached. The last British bustard 
on record was captured by a little boy in January, 1856, on the 
borders of Wiltshire, near Hungerford; he found it with its leg 
broken by the side of a field of turnips, as he was taking his 
brother’s dinner to a lone farm, about a mile off. As the bird was 
fluttering he caught hold of one of its wings and dragged it along 
nearly a quarter of a mile till he reached the farm, when he took 
it into the barn, where the men were assembled at their dinner, 
and one of them killed it by breaking its neck. The little boy 
then bore it home in triumph to his mother. It afterwards passed 
into the hands of Mr. W. H. Rowland, of Hungerford, by whom 
it was sent to London to be preserved, and afterwards was added 
to the fine collection of the Rev. G. Marsh, at Sutton Benger. 
Some of the older inhabitants of Salisbury can still remember the 
bustard which was kept for several months at the Red Lion Hotel, 
in this city, by Mrs. Steedman, to whom it was given by a traveller 
who captured it as he was on his way from Devizes to Salisbury. 
