LAND-HAIL. 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, T have heard 

 several, soon after day break, in June and July, appar- 

 ently calling to one another from either side of 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 1st 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." 



