89 



insect upon wliicli lie "vvas feeding. The light was still 

 g'ood enough to enable him to see fine silkworm gut to 

 which the fly was attached. To sit on a bank, smoke a 

 pipe of peace, and listen to the nightingales, is not a bad 

 way of waiting for the light to fade. In the gloaming I 

 dropped a large "governor" at the right spot, and the 

 trout took it with a sousing rise immediately. I had no 

 end of a fight with him, for he was feeding on the edge of 

 a big willow branch with a lot of floating weeds attached 

 to it. Truth to tell he got into the fringe of this haven 

 of safety in spite of all I could do to keep him out. But 

 he tore the lump of weeds away eventually, and I fought 

 it out with him thus enveloped in a mass of green stuff ! 

 None the less he eventually gave up the unequal contest, 

 and proved to be a handsome, well-fed fish, of fully Iflb. 

 avoirdupois — not fisherman's — weight. And what a break- 

 fast he made, both for myself and our man Friday. 



The corn crakes are very numerous in our valley this 

 year, and a pair of these birds are breeding within sight 

 of my bedroom window. By the aid of a powerful glass 

 I watched their movements and saw the old cock-bird run 

 about amono'st the o-rass ierkino" his head from side to side, 

 uttering " crakes " as he did so. The direction of the bird's 

 head as each '' crake " was given produced the ventrilo- 

 quial effect of making the call appear to come from different 

 quarters. The old birds leave us usually, on their autumn 

 migration, early in August, whilst the youngsters, if a 

 late brood, remain quite a month longer in the meadows 

 where they are hatched. These birds, to look at, 

 appear to be quite incapable of a long- sustained flight, 

 and they seldom go more than a couple of hundred yards 

 when flushed by the partridge shooters. It is placed 

 beyond all doubt, however, that in their annual migrations, 

 spring and autumn, th<es6 short-winged crakes not only 

 cross the Channel, but they sometimes cover more than a 

 hundred miles %^'ithout alighting. There is nothing con- 

 nected with natural histor}^ which possesses so much 

 interest to the student as the migration of birds, and yet 

 how little we know upon the subject ! "\Ye hail their 



