426 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
central fork from twenty to fifty feet up. The usual nesting materials 
employed are sticks, twigs, moss, hair, and wool; one nest last year 
was partly composed of pieces of paper picked up from the rubbish 
on the Wells Sewage Farm, a distance of about three hundred yards 
from the nesting tree. It is difficult to approach the sitting bird 
within easy gunshot ; it could be accomplished by stealth, but not, I 
should say, by openly walking across a meadow to the nest, especially 
when incubation is not advanced. These observations refer to the 
latter part of March and early part of April, when the trees are 
destitute of foliage, and the fact of the bird always leaving the nest 
when I was well away from it enabled me to notice a common habit 
of the female on her quitting the nest. Immediately on leaving she 
hops or jumps down, as it were, on extended wings a good yard or 
more before sailing off with laboured flight across the meadow, to 
watch from a near tree what is going to take place. She does not 
leave the nest in the same way as a Magpie does or a Ring-Plover, by 
flying straight away at the same altitude or higher. I say “she,” 
because I am of opinion that the female alone performs the task of 
incubation. I have watched the same bird that left the nest return 
to it again, the other bird being the while in an opposite tree. The 
full complement of eggs I have found to be commonly five, occa- 
sionally four, and rarely six. Sometimes one egg differs from the 
rest of the set, and resembles very much the Jackdaw type. I have 
known only one instance of an unspotted egg, one of a set of five. If 
two or three eggs are taken, the remaining eggs to make up the set 
are, as a rule, deposited within a few days, and incubation proceeds 
with two or three eggs, as the case may be. I have not found a full 
clutch laid again in the same nest, and if a nest be robbed of its full 
complement it is forsaken. Large birds are not allowed in the 
nesting tree. Rooks especially are driven away, and chased some 
distance off with angry cries, the Crow returning immediately to its 
tree. I have noticed this happens when the nest is being built as 
well as when it contains eggs.—Stanutey Lewis (Wells, Somerset). 
Increase of Land-Rail (Crex pratensis). — Has the Corn-Crake 
been more common generally as a nesting species during the present 
year, or only partially so? In Somerset it seems to have been more 
plentiful (ante, p. 316), and in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, 
whence my personal observations have been made, it has nested 
again in many localities which it had deserted for many years past.— 
J. STEELE Exuiott (Dowles Manor, Shropshire). 
