THE TEAL AND THE WATER-RAIL 273 



a water-rail's ! The water-rail very rarely stays 

 to breed in this country during the summer, and 

 the wonder is that she and her near relative, the 

 land-rail, which is, of course, a summer visitant, 

 with their very slender powers of flight, hardly able 

 to surmount even a moderate hedge, can ever live 

 to cross the streak of " melancholy," or of lively 

 ocean, which separates us from our nearest neigh- 

 bours ; much more to reach the shores, as, I believe, 

 they ultimately do, of Africa. So convinced, indeed, 

 are the country folk in Dorset that they cannot 

 cross the sea, that I have been often gravely 

 assured by them that they never do so, and that 

 the water-rail of the winter turns into the land-rail 

 of the summer months ! It is true, of course, that 

 some birds, in their summer plumage, such as the 

 ptarmigan, differ widely from the winter ; but the 

 rustic forgets that it is hardly possible for a semi- 

 aquatic bird ever to become a land one, and that it is 

 quite impossible for the long curving beak of the 

 water-rail to change annually into the short stout 

 beak of the land-rail. Happy will he be who, if 

 the nest turns out to be a water-rail's, gets a sample 

 of its eggs! It would be well worth a second 

 journey of a hundred miles to get them. 



We now leave, for a time, the sheet of water, 



s 



