bear a few scattered contour spots of dull-brown. I am inclined to consider 

 circletted eggs as quite unusual. My first two sets, only, exhibit this character- 

 istic to any degree. The norm is probably a capped egg, with no spots, or 

 few at most, over most of the surfaces. Two or three eggs in some sets may have 

 the markings at the smaller end. Lineate markings appear to be rare, although 

 a few eggs may bear a very few such that approximate what Nehrkorn, in his 

 scholarly Eiersammtung, has termed "schnorkeln" (flourishes). For a remote 

 example of this type of marking, see the egg photo portrayed (from one of my 

 first sets) — J. L. Childs Collection — in Reed's N. A. Birds' Eggs, 105. Alto- 

 gether the handsomest eggs of the entire series, of some ninety-nine units, are 

 those of the set of 1912. All of these are uniformly and splendidly capped with 

 a centrally solid mass of blended lilac and mahogany. Shells of the eggs of 

 Yellow Rails are of slight gloss. They are quite hard, as one might expect from 

 the character of the food eaten. 



The literature germane to the breeding habits and conditions of these 

 Rails is lamentably small and fragmentary. Hutchins, writing a century 

 and a half ago, tells of what he (superficially) noted, in the Hudson Bay Region; 

 while Preble, (N. A. Fauna No. 22), accurately describes the call-note. These 

 two observers have established the northern limits of the breeding range. May- 

 nard has told of the nestings of the Yellow Rail on the Magdalen Islands; Kuro- 

 lien and Hollister have laconically cited the discovery of "young barely able to 

 fly", in Wisconsin, at Lake Koshkonong, the famous; and B. H. Swales has 

 illuminatingly spoken of this Rail as "found in portions of Michigan in low, wet 

 fields grown up to tangled, coarse grass, weeds and sedges, from April to June" 

 (The Auk, XXIX, 101). 



I have reserved for the closing sections of this sketch a weird story of a 

 remarkable, a unique, nesting of the Yellow Rail, on our Big Coulee, long years 

 ago. Search for the nests of Yellow Rails may readily become a matter, not 

 so much of the investigating eye as of the scrutinizing fingers. As one labors 

 thus, hour after hour, the quest grows a trifle mechanical. So did it come about 

 on a day, late one afternoon, far from where the Rails were clicking, that I 



NEST OF 1912, AS FOUND. 



41 



