242 On the Occurrence of some of the Rarer Species of Birds 



the telegraph wireS; aud another met its fate in the same year, and in 

 the same way, near Westbury. In 1879 a friend of mine from 

 Salisbury, Mr. Mangin, brought me a wing of this bird for 

 identification, which had also been picked up under the wires near 

 Salisbury, and which had been apparently quite severed from the 

 body by the force of the concussion ; and these three occurrences 

 happening so near together would certainly prove them to be more 

 numerous than they are usually believed to be, for none of these 

 three specimens would have been heard of, had it not been for their 

 singular misfortune. The young birds, Hart informs me, have been 

 found near Christchurch, and on the 14th of June, 1881, as Mr. 

 Baker writes me, a nest containing twelve eggs was cut out in a 

 clover field adjoining a marsh beside the stream at Mere. Mr. Baker 

 sent up one of the eggs to the Field Office, and it was pronounced 

 to be an undoubted specimen of the Spotted Crake [vide Field, Nat. 

 Hist, notes, June 18th, 1881). The eggs, one of which Mr. Baker 

 very kindly sent me, strongly resemble the Quail's, but they are 

 more thickly blotched, and are more uniform in shape at the two 

 ends. 



Crex Baillo7iii. " Baillon's Crake.'' Several of these rare little 

 Crakes Hart has in his collection, one of which he bought recently 

 from the collection of the late well-known Grantley Berkley. It was 

 killed in the meadows bordering the Avon between Christchurch and 

 Winkton, which is about one and a-half mile across the meadows, 

 in the year 1863. The entire length of this little bird is only 

 6^in., so that, even if pressed, it is rarely seen or procured, as the 

 thick sedges and rank herbage of the places it frequents afibrd it 

 so secure a shelter. It is said not to be uncommon in France, and 

 to have a large and extended range, specimens having also been 

 procured both from Asia and Africa. 



Crex Pusilla, " Little, or Olivaceous Crake.'' One of these 

 birds was killed in the same place as that of the last-named species, 

 between Christchurch and Winkton, in the year 1866, and is also 

 in Hart's museum. He has also other notices of these Crakes, he 

 tells me, but not on the Avon side of the district, but on that of 

 the Stour. This and the latter species are both of much the same 



