SPOTTED CRAKE.— LITTLE CRAKE. 191 



it to be more common than is supposed. I have often found 

 it, when Snipe-shooting, on Henfield Common, especially in 

 October, though I have never met with, or heard of, the nest 

 in Sussex. 



I have often shot the adult bird in the county, and on two 

 occasions, in September, obtained an immature example on 

 the aforesaid Common. It principally resorts to wet and 

 boggy places, where it conceals itself among the thickest 

 herbage, and feeds on mollusks, water-insects, and small 

 seeds, particularly those of the reed. It also frequents the 

 weedy banks of streams and large ponds. The nest is built on 

 wet ground, formed of aquatic plants and some finer materials. 



LITTLE CRAKE. 



Porzana i^arva. 



As the greater number of examples of this species which have 

 been met with in England have occurred in April or May, it 

 may be presuoied to be migratory, and from its frequenting 

 similar situations, its food and habits are probably the same 

 as those of its congeners. 



The bird described by Markwick as the Spotted Gallinule, 

 iu Trans. Linn. Soc. (vol. iv. p. 9), which was shot by the 

 side of a mill-pond at Catsfield, near Battle, in March 1791, 

 turns out to have been the Little Crake, Porzana parva, of 

 Yarrell. This interesting fact has lately been made known 

 by Mr. Hartmg (Zoologist, 1890, pp. 343-344), in a notice of 

 an unpublished manuscript by Markwick, now in the library 

 of the Linnean Society, where there is also a coloured figure 

 representing Porzana parva. 



Two specimens have come into my own possession. The 

 first was taken alive near Seeding chalk- pit, on the banks of 



