LAND-RAIL. 389 
a river or smaller stream flowing through a range of 
rich meadows or, in the “ Broad” district, those drier 
marshes which divide the arable land from the actual 
swamp. This species, even if more abundant in some 
seasons than in others, is never, I believe, so plentiful here 
as in more northern counties ;* but wherever their cries 
have been heard repeatedly during the summer months, 
some few are almost invariably killed in autumn. As 
before stated, these birds frequent the swampy margins 
of rivers and broads, and in such localities on the 
banks of the Yare, near Coldham Hall, [ have heard 
several, soon after day break, in June and July, appar- 
ently calling to one another from either side or the 
stream, but, as Mr. Johns remarks in his “ British Birds 
in their Haunts,” “it is not easy to decide on the 
position and distance of the bird while uttering 
its note; for the corn-crake is a ventriloquist of 
no mean proficiency.” Of their breeding habits Mr. 
Gould writes in his “Birds of Great Britain :”— 
“By the time the grass is ready for the scythe, the 
mead bespangled with the butter cup, and the charlock 
well in flower, the hatching time has arrived, and the 
coal black young are following their parents stealthily 
through the grass. These active little creatures must 
grow with unusual rapidity, for the barley is scarcely 
ripe before they can fly, and the Ist of September is 
usually too late for sportsmen to benefit by more than 
a remnant of the thousands that must be bred in 
our islands.” It by no means follows, however, that 
because an unusual number are found by the sports- 
men at the commencement of the shooting-season that 
* Selby writes, ‘upon the banks of the Trent below Newark, 
the meadows are annually visited by great numbers of corn crakes, 
and I have, in the course of an hour, killed eight or ten in a single 
field.” 
