184 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
visible above the crop, is in danger of receiving the sportsman’s 
charge. I never attempted to make any great bag, but I 
have frequently shot ten brace. The biggest bag I heard of 
was eighty brace to one gun, or rather to one sportsman with 
two guns, at Cairo. The neighbourhood of Cairo is very 
good; indeed it would be hard to particularise any place 
which is not good at the right time, but on the whole we 
nowhere got better shooting than in the plain of Thebes, 
right up to the very Colossi. Without a dog you must 
expect to lose a third unless your native is very expert in 
marking them. By the middle of April the migration was 
all past. On the 12th we killed thirteen brace: that was 
the last day we made a bag. After that they became just 
as scarce as they had been in the Delta in January. 
That some stay the summer to breed is certain, and it 
would appear that a few nest in the winter or early spring, 
for on the 22nd of March I flushed an early “squeaker” 
able to fly, which must have been hatched some weeks. I 
never saw any others. I conclude the natives occasionally 
catch them for their own consumption, as I was now and 
then brought a snared one. In Hasselquist’s time they 
netted them in Lower Egypt. 
129. CORNCRAKE, Ortygometra crex (Linn.) 
The only one I saw was a stuffed one at Mr. Mayer’s, 
killed at or near Alexandria. 
130. SPOTTED CRAKE, Porzana maruetta, Leach. 
Was met with at Damietta and Benha in January. 
Captain Shelley may be right in thinking it a resident, but 
we did not find any at the Faioum. 
