The Zoologist — April, 1867. G79 



could not determine, as the lungs were gone. That it should attain 

 such a quantity of fat just before migrating seems very inconsistent 

 with a long and fatiguing flight; such a bird I would expect, when 

 flushed, to fly for the nearest hedge, skulk there and not rise again, as 

 they often do in autumn. To dream of one of my gamey little bloods 

 in this stale of fat, and I trying to get even ten miles an hour out of 

 him, would be a shocking nightmare tome, and I am sure that a man 

 in the same state of fat would think it no nightmare to have to walk 

 smartly for one short hour; but then all this may have nothing to do 

 with birds : those who tell us that this fat is for sustenance in the 

 " long flight" at all events will say so. Somehow I cannot divest my- 

 self of the belief that the corn crake hybernates, notwithstanding my 

 having found it repeatedly dead in the sea, both during autumn and 

 spring, which many would say should prove migration to the most 

 sceptical. I do not for one moment doubt that it leaves Ireland in 

 numbers in the autumn, but where does it go ? Does it hybernate 

 where it goes to ? Is it to be met with anywhere in numbers, flying or 

 running, during our winter ? Does it only crake in its spring or summer 

 haunts ? In support of hybernation, we have this great amount of fat, 

 coming on winter (corn crakes often burst from fat when shot and fall 

 to the ground), which all hybernating animals attain ; the number of 

 uninjured and healthy birds found in Ireland during winter, their 

 peculiar skulking habits at this season, the old hollow ditches they 

 frequent, their peculiar apathy and disinclination to fly, and their early 

 appearance, without "craking," along the sedges of rivers (I have seen 

 them in the middle of March), which would be the first places they 

 would make for after their winter rest. I do not see why hybernation 

 of birds is so much scouted, for scores of animals and millions of in- 

 sects do so. Many fishes, too, become so torpid that you may fish 

 weeks and not get one, yet some fine day dozens of the kind you look 

 for will reward your patience ; still you have been told or read some- 

 where that that species migrates from our shores in autumn, " to seek 

 more genial seas," and that is why they are not caught in winter. The 

 subject is very far from being absurd, though many have considered it 

 equally so with " corn crake turning to water rail." Though 1 knocked 

 down a ditch some years ago in January, and turned out three living 

 corn crakes, and ate them too, still it stands for nothing — no "big 

 gun" of an ornithologist saw it, therefore "I must have mistaken the 

 bird; but the next time send us the ditch and the bird in it — mind, in 

 it — and we will tell you whether the birds are corn crakes or not." 



