32 EYES AND NO EYES 
describe the haunt of that spotted crake, or, as it is 
usually called, spotted rail, which, after all, did not 
come into my hands. A water rail is a bad enough 
bird to look up ; a spotted rail or crake is worse. 
Both can run, climb, swim, dive to perfection. Even 
in thick tangle their movements are as cautious 
as when they, with coots and moorhens, visit the 
gardens on the edge of the swamp from which these 
have been reclaimed. This they will do in order to 
pick the hearts out of the ground crops that have 
just been planted. How they find them out we do not 
know ; and the mischief is done late in the evening 
and at night. I have seen them at it many a time, 
and when the pools or ponds are close to cottages 
situated on estates this has to be put up with : no 
shot may be fired, or noose set, where the gentleman 
in the velveteen suit walks round. I do not intend 
to enter into this matter : not being my business, I 
leave it. 
A tramp through meadows, with the Mole 
twisting in the most erratic manner, for three miles, 
brings us to a clear pool of considerable extent, 
fringed on one side with dense aquatic tangle. Hay- 
ing time is over, so we go right up to the bank of 
tangle from the meadows through which the river 
snakes. As sedges, bullrushes, stunted willows, 
