222 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



for the driving away of this shy bird from some of its old 

 haunts. 



Range outside the British Islands. The Land-Rail is dis- 

 tributed over the greater part of Europe and Asia as far east 

 as the Valley of the Yenesei, and that of the Lena, breeding 

 also in Western Turkestan. On migration it passes through 

 the countries of Southern Europe, but Mr. Saunders believes 

 that it does not breed south of the line of the Pyrenees. Its 

 winter quarters are in Africa, and at this season of the year it 

 also wanders to Arabia and the shores of the Persian Gulf. 

 The Land-Rail has also been met with in Greenland and the 

 Eastern United States, and in the Bermudas. 



Habits. The Land-Rail or Corn-Crake is a familiar inhabi- 

 tant of our pasture-lands in summer, where its grating and 

 monotonous creak-creak is heard, especially towards evening, 

 and long after darkness has set in. Its cry is distinctly ventri- 

 loquial, and Mr. Howard Saunders considers that this is due 

 " to the marvellous rapidity with which it sneaks, unperceived, 

 from one spot to another." I have not myself observed this ; 

 but, on the contrary, I believe that, like the notes of the 

 Creeper or the Grasshopper Warbler, the utterance of the 

 Corn-Crake's note has that ventriloquial power that makes its 

 cry sound far or near. I remember, on one occasion, making 

 my way into one of our own fields of high grass at Cookham in 

 search of one of these birds at night, and when within ten 

 yards of the Crake, its note sounded from all points of the 

 compass around me ; but I stopped still, refusing to be deluded 

 by its ventriloquism, until I crept to the spot whence 

 I was sure that the sounds proceeded, and at last I managed 

 to approach so close above it that I almost succeeded in catch- 

 ing it before it scented danger and scuttled away. My old 

 friend Briggs, the Cookham naturalist, who first taught me to 

 skin birds, and with whom Mr. Howard Saunders and myself 

 have had many a ramble, used to pride himself on being able 

 to track Land-Rails in the grass, and I remember on one occa- 

 sion walking with him in the meadows opposite the Cliefden 

 Woods, when we heard the creak of one of these Rails close 

 to us in a hay-field. He not only walked straight to where the 

 bird was, but as it flew up, he threw his walking-stick at it and 



