SPOTTED CRAKE. . 541 
(Crex carolina), which may easily be distinguished by having the forehead, 
lores, chin, and upper throat black. An example of this species was 
shot in October 1864 by Mr. H. S. Eyre on the Kennet river, near 
Newbury, in Berkshire (Newton, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1865, p. 196).. This 
species breeds in the Northern United States and in Canada up to about 
lat. 62°, wintering in the Southern States, Mexico, Central America, and 
the West-Indian Islands. It has once been obtained in Greenland. It is 
impossible to say whether the specimen obtained in England had escaped 
from confinement. 
The habits of the Spotted Crake are precisely the same as those of the 
Water-Rail, to which bird it otherwise bears so close a resemblance that it 
is difficult to believe that they ought to be placed in different genera. 
The two birds are equally shy and skulking; they frequent the same 
fenny and marshy districts ; one is as unsociable as the other and as 
unwilling to take wing; their flight is the same, heavy, laboured, straight 
progress through the air, with rapid beats of the broad, rounded wings ; 
the note during the breeding-season is the same liquid whit, though that 
of the smaller bird is not so loud; and the position of the nest and the 
materials of which it is composed are so similar that a description of 
the one reads like a copy of that of the other. Naumann says that the 
call-note of the Spotted Crake is between a squeak and a whistle, which 
cannot be expressed on paper. 
The best locality in which to study the habits of the Spotted Crake is 
the village of Valconswaard in Holland, on the borders of Belgium and 
Germany. Thecountry is almost a dead level, with here and there a small 
range, not of mountains, but of mounds, which are apparently heaps of 
sand or gravel. In the area of, say, a hundred square miles, of which 
Valconswaard in the centre, fifty miles are open heath-covered moor, where 
Peewits, Curlews, and Black Terns breed. About five and twenty miles 
are forests of Scotch fir, inhabited by Tits, Crows, and Hawks. Perhaps 
fifteen miles are arable land, wheat and other corn-crops, varied with beans, 
potatoes, and rape; whilst the remaining ten square miles are river, lake, 
and marsh, abounding with Ducks and Sandpipers of various species, and 
the favourite breeding-grounds of the Spotted Crake. The nests are 
very difficult to find; but Wharton and I succeeded in finding two nests 
during our first day’s search, but one was empty and the other contained 
only one egg. The following day we were not sg successful, but meeting 
a peasant early in the day who had found a nest with six eggs, we rashly 
commissioned him to obtain us some more at the price of three pence each. 
In the evening he turned up at our little inn, and we had to pay him for 
forty-eight eggs! He told us that he had a couple of dogs which he had 
trained to go bird-nesting with him. In spite of the abundance of the bird 
we did not catch a sight of it more than half a dozen times during 
