814 MANUAL OF MODERJf FARRIERY. 



as before. Having laid it again upon the ground and retired 

 to some distance, the bird in about five minutes warilj raised 

 its head, looked round, and decamped at full speed. I have 

 seen a similar circumstance take place with a partridge ; and 

 it is well known that many insects will practise the same 

 deception.'' 



Landrails probably congregate before they emigrate, as I 

 am assured that a considerable number were, on one occasion, 

 seen together near the sea-shore in the neighbourhood of 

 Swansea, about the time they usually take their departure. 



The nest of the landrail is formed on the ground, and con- 

 sists of a few dry plants, and generally a field of thick grass, 

 clover, or green com is selected as the place for incubating : 

 the female deposits from eight to ten eggs, of a reddish- 

 white, spotted and speckled with ash-grey and pale reddish- 

 brown. The young are covered with black down, and run as 

 soon as they quit the shell, and follow their mother, but do 

 not quit the meadow until the scythe sweeps away their ha- 

 bitation. The late hatches are plundered by the mower, and 

 all the early broods then shelter in buck-wheat or other 

 grain, and in waste grounds overspread with broom, where 

 in summer they are found : a few return again to the mea- 

 dows at the end of the season. Yarrell records the circum- 

 stance of some men mowing grass upon a small island 

 belonging to the fishing-water of Low Bells, on Tweed : they 

 cut the head from a corncrake that was sitting upon eleven 

 eggs : about twenty yards from this spot they had nearly de- 

 capitated a partridge in the same way, which was sitting 

 upon eighteen eggs ; but observing her, the mowers took the 

 eggs from the nest of the corncrake and put them into that 

 of the partridge. Two days after she brought out the whole 

 brood, which were afterwards seen running about the island 

 following the partridge, which catered for them all, and was 



