BAILLON'S CRAKE. 107 



and more congenial latitude, was so exhausted by want 

 of food, or the low temperature of the season, or the com- 

 bined effects of both, as to allow itself to be taken alive by 

 the hand. 11 In the third volume of the same Journal, page 

 493, G. T. Fox, Esq., of Durham, has recorded another 

 specimen of this bird, which was killed within three miles 

 of Derby, in November 1821. In the catalogue of the 

 Birds of Norfolk and Suffolk, published in the fifteenth 

 volume of the Transactions of the Linnaean Society, the 

 authors, in reference to BaiHon's Crake, say, " We have 

 met with a specimen of this bird in the collection of Mr. 

 Crickmore, of Beccles, which was shot near that town. 

 The throat, neck, and belly are ash colour ; the sides and 

 under tail-coverts barred and spotted with black and 

 white ; the back is like that of the Spotted Gallinule ; 

 but this bird is considerably smaller than that species. 

 An extremely small Gallinule, probably of this same kind, 

 was shot at Nacton in Suffolk, many years since, and was 

 in the possession of the late John Vernon, Esq. 11 



The Rev. Richard Lubbock wrote me from Norfolk as 

 follows : " On the 2nd of April 1833, a fen-man of my 

 acquaintance killed an adult male of this species, upon 

 a marsh at Dilham in this county ; it is now in my pos- 

 session. Three years previously he had killed another at 

 Barton, the adjoining parish ; it was late in autumn, and 

 the bird was in immature plumage. This species is pro- 

 bably not so rare as it is supposed to be ; when shooting 

 in parts of France and Switzerland, where it is not un- 

 common, I could never manage to get more than one 

 specimen, its power of running, skulking, and general 

 concealment is so great. 11 In September 1840, Francis 

 Edwards, Esq. of Brislington, near Bristol, sent me word 

 that an adult female of this species had been killed a short 

 time before, on some marshy ground near Weston-super- 



