LAND RAIL. 139 



A summer visitor in small numbers to the Faeroes, 

 the Land Rail occurs at that season in Norway up to the 

 Arctic circle, and, more locally, in Sweden. Rare in 

 summer at Archangel, it is generally distributed over 

 Russia south of the Baltic, and throughout Central Europe, 

 especially at the seasons of migration : breeding in suitable 

 localities ; but in Southern France, the Spanish Penin- 

 sula, the islands of the Mediterranean, Italy south of 

 Venetia, Greece, and Southern Russia, it is princi- 

 pally, if not entirely, a bird of passage.* Beyond the 

 Mediterranean it is to some extent a resident throughout 

 the winter ; but numbers of Land Rails continue their 

 migrations across and along the coasts of Africa down to 

 Natal, where, according to Mr. Ayres, they are at times 

 abundant ; and occasionally to Cape Colony. Mr. Vernon 

 Harcourt enumerates this species among the birds of 

 Madeira, and Mr. F. D. Godman was shown examples 

 obtained in the Azores. East of the Mediterranean, it 

 appears to be resident in Asia Minor, and, according to 

 Canon Tristram, in Palestine : ranging through Persia to 

 Afghanistan and Kashmir. Severtzoff states that it breeds 

 in Turkestan, and it occurs in Siberia as far as the Lena ; 

 but is not recoi-ded from China or Japan. 



The Land Rail is a very rare straggler to Iceland, 

 and a single example was obtained near Godthaab, Green- 

 land, in 1851. Professor Baird states that several have 

 occurred on the eastern coasts of the United States, 

 and a solitary individual was shot in the Bermudas in 

 October, 1847. In these distant migrations both this and 

 other species probably avail themselves of the spars and 

 rigging of passing vessels on which they can repose un- 

 observed at night, and not unfrequently even by day. Mr. 

 Gould relates that, on his outward voyage to America, a 

 Land Rail rested on the ship when more than two hundred 



* In the south of France the peasants call the Land Rail " roi des cailles," 

 and in Spain it is known by the name of "guion de las codornices," owing to 

 an idea that it places itself at the head of the Quails, and precedes tbem on 

 their migrations. 



