THE LAND-RAIL 249 



on the water, it may possibly be enabled to rest 

 itself en route during its migration. 



When the summer grass is growing long, the 

 corn crake may be heard more or less throughout 

 the land, especially towards evening, though it is 

 by no means silent during the hours of daylight. 

 The ease with which it is able to thread its 

 way through the thickest herbage is extraordinary, 

 moving as rapidly through the densest clover as if 

 it were stubble. Many hundreds of these birds 

 are annually killed during the partridge season in 

 September. Their flesh is considered a great 

 delicacy. The note of the corn crake is a hoarse 

 kind of croak, very similar to the croaking of a 

 frog, and by no means unlike the noise made by a 

 fishing-reel when the line is being wound up. I 

 have often enticed one of these birds to within a 

 few paces of me by drawing the line from off my 

 reel when fishing in the summer evenings. On 

 May 4 I heard the corn crake, for the first time 

 this year (1895), in a meadow in front of my 

 house, and I could hear the same bird calling at 

 10.30 p.m. 



In addition to the land - rail, or corn crake, 

 the spotted and little crakes, the water-rail, 

 the moor-hen, and the coot belong to the same 

 family. The spotted crake cannot be described 

 as common nowadays, though it is said to have 

 been abundant before the country was as well 

 drained as it is at the present time. Both 

 the spotted and the little crake are migratory 



