GREAT BUSTARD. 
3 
that the Great Bustard was at one time common in that county ; 
so it doubtless was on the Lincolnshire Wolds, but it is now 
extinct as an inhabitant. Dr. Plomley records in the ‘Zoologist,’ 
page 2700, the occurrence of one, a female, at Lydd, on 
Bomney Marsh, Kent, January 4th., 1850, and the species 
would appear, he says, %o have been not uncommon there 
formerly. In Devonshire one is recorded by John Gatcombe, 
Esq., in ‘The Naturalist,’ vol. ii, page 33, as having been 
shot on December 31st., 1851, at Millaton Bridestowe. In 
Cornwall one was met with the beginning of 1843, on the 
open moor country between Helston and the Lizard Point; 
it was a female. 
In Scotland it was formerly met with, but Sir Bobert Sibbald 
mentions it as being rare in his day; one was shot in 
Morayshire in 1803, by W. Young, Esq., of Boroughead. 
In Ireland it was enumerated by Smith in 1749 as one of 
the birds of the county of Cork, but it has long since become 
extinct there, as well as now in this part of the kingdom. If 
some feathered ‘Bip Yan Winkle’ of the ‘good old times’ 
could revisit the scenes he frequented in the ‘days that are 
gone,’ he would so little recognise them as the same, that he 
would not wonder that none of his kind were still to be 
found in haunts now rendered so unsuitable to them. 
The Bustard has been domesticated, but is said to continue 
tierce towards strangers, and not to breed in confinement. 
It is naturally a wild bird, and frequents in winter open 
barren places, from whence it is only compelled by stress of 
severe weather, wheu the snow is deep, to approach nearer 
to country villages; in the summer, however, the nest being 
placed in cultivated places, where the young are brought up, 
they and the dams find their living among corn. The males 
are polygamous, and leave the females as soon as the task of 
incubation commences, both then living separate for a few 
weeks. The young families unite together in the autumn, 
and in winter congregate still more, forming flocks of from 
four or five to about forty or fifty, or even, it is said, a 
couple of hundreds; in the spring they again separate. These 
birds are very fine eating, the young especially, at about a 
year old. In the spring the males, in small parties of three 
or four, strut about, with drooped wings and spread set-up 
tails, shewing themselves off to excite admiration. 
In flight their wings are moved slowly, but if suddenly 
disturbed it would appear that they rise suddenly to a height 
