SPOTTED CRAKE. 541 



{Crex Carolina), which may easily be distinguished by having the forehead, 

 lores, chin, and upper throat black. An example of this species was 

 shot in October 1864 by Mr. H. S. Eyre on the Kennet river, near 

 Newbury, in Berkshire (Newton, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1865, p. 196). This 

 species breeds in the Northern United States and in Canada up to about 

 lat. 62°, wintering in the Southern States, Mexico, Central America, and 

 the "V^'est-Indian Islands. It has once been obtained in Greenland. It is 

 impossible to say whether the specimen obtained in England had escaped 

 from confinement. 



The habits of the Spotted Crake are precisely the same as those of the 

 Water-Rail, to which bird it otherwise bears so close a resemblance that it 

 is dif&cult to believe that they ought to be placed in different genera. 

 ' The two birds are equally shy and skulking ; they frequent the same 

 fenny and marshy districts ; one is as unsociable as the other and as 

 unwilling to take wing ; their flight is the same, heavy, laboured, straight 

 progress through the air, with rapid beats of the broad, rounded wings ; 

 the note during the breeding-season is the same liquid whit, though that 

 of the smaller bird is not so loud ; and the position of the nest and the 

 materials of which it is composed are so similar that a description of 

 the one reads like a copy of that of the other. Naumann says that the 

 caU-note of the Spotted Crake is between a squeak and a whistle, which 

 cannot be expressed on paper. 



The best locality in which to study the habits of the Spotted Crake is 

 the village of Valconswaard in Holland, on the borders of Belgium and 

 Germany. The country is almost a dead level, with here and there a small 

 range, not of mountains, but of mounds, which are apparently heaps of 

 sand or gravel. In the area of, say, a hundred square miles, of which 

 Valconswaard in the centre, fifty miles are open heath-covered moor, where 

 Peewits, Curlews, and Black Terns breed. About five and twenty miles 

 are forests of Scotch fir, inhabited by Tits, Crows, and Hawks. Perhaps 

 fifteen miles are arable land, wheat and other corn-crops, varied with beans, 

 potatoes, and rape ; whilst the remaining ten square miles are river, lake, 

 and marsh, abounding with Ducks and Sandpipers of various species, and 

 the favourite breeding-grounds of the Spotted Crake. The nests are 

 very difficult to find ; but Wharton and I succeeded in finding two nests 

 during our first day's search, but one was empty and the other contained 

 only one egg. The following day we were not so successful, but meeting 

 a peasant early in the day who had found a nest with six eggs, we rashly 

 commissioned him to obtain us some more at the price of three pence each. 

 In the evening he turned up at our little inn, and we had to pay him for 

 forty-eight eggs ! He told us that he had a couple of dogs which he had 

 trained to go bird-nesting with him. In spite of the abundance of the bird 

 we did not catch a sight of it more than half a dozen times during 



