More bustards are killed thus than by all the other methods combined--a hundred times more than by our scientific and sportsmanlike system of driving presently to be described. Except for this unworthy massacre of mothers with their broods in summer, and the two clumsy artifices before mentioned, the bustards are left practically unmolested--their wildness and the open nature of their haunts defy all the strategy of native fowlers. The hen-bustard deposits her eggs--usually three, but on very rare occasions four--among the green April corn; incubation and the rearing of the young take place in the security of vast silent stretches of waving wheat. The young bustards grow with that wheat, and, ere it is reaped (unless prematurely massacred), are able to take care of themselves. A somewhat more legitimate method of outwitting the great bustard is practised at this season. During harvest, while the country is being cleared of crops, the birds become accustomed to see bullock-carts daily passing with creaking wheel to carry away the sheaves from the stubble to the _era_, or levelled threshing-ground, where the grain is trodden out, Spanish fashion, by teams of mares. The loan of a _carro_ with its pair of oxen and their driver having been obtained, the cart is rigged up with _estéras_--that is, esparto-matting stretched round the uprights which serve to hold the load of sheaves in position. A few sacks of straw thrown on the floor of the cart save one, in some small degree, from the merciless jolting of this primitive conveyance on rough ground. Two or three guns can find room therein, while the driver, lying forward, directs the team with a goad. This moving battery fairly resembles a load of sheaves, and well do we remember the terrible, suffocating heat we have endured, shut up for hours in this thing during the blazing days of July and August. The result, nevertheless, repays all suffering. We refer to no mere cynegetic pride but to the enduring joy of observing, at close quarters and still unsuspicious, these glorious game-birds at home on their private plains. The local idea is to fire through a slit previously made in the _estéras_; but somehow, when the cart stops and the game instantly rises, you find (despite care and practice) that the birds always fly in a direction you cannot command or where the narrow slit forbids your covering them. Hence we adopted the plan of sliding off behind as the cart pulled up, thus firing the two barrels with perfect freedom. We have succeeded by this means in bringing to bag many pairs of bustard during a day's manoeuvring. [Illustration: SPANISH THISTLE AND STONECHAT]