214 THE SPOTTED CRAKE. 



might now and then be blown on to the Coast of Afacan), and the 

 other entering from the west sweeps over the Punjab, Rajputana, 

 Sind, Guzerat and the Deccan to about as far south as Mysore. 



Doubtless future investigations will show that individual mem- 

 bers of these swarms extend as stragglers to many places whence 

 none have as yet been recorded ; but I think that in its main 

 features this hypothesis will prove correct. 



Of the northern migration we have direct evidence. On the 

 24th September the first Yarkand expedition captured a speci- 

 men of this species at the Karatagh Lake on the Karakorum 

 (elevation 16,000 feet), which is in a direct line between the 

 plains of Yarkand and Le. The bird was clearly a migrant, — a 

 tired bird that had dropped out of a flight, and that was easily 

 caught by the hand. The lake lies in perfectly bare shingle, with- 

 out a particle of grass or sedge about it, so that only a wearied 

 traveller would have halted there. Again, on the 21st of 

 September, some years later, the third Yarkand mission captured 

 a similar tired migrant, at Toghrasee (elevation 11,265), which 

 is in the same line and just 52 miles north of the Karatagh. 



Of the western migration we only know that three specimens 

 from Peshawar, Kohat, and Dera Ismail Khan, — the only ones I 

 have seen from these localities, — were obtained early in October. 



Outside our limits, we know that this species is common in 

 the summer in the marshes of Yarkand, occurs and breeds in 

 Eastern Turkestan, is common in Kabul, and has occurred in 

 Beluchistan and Persia (indeed is common, De Filippi states, in 

 spring at Veramin, south-east of Teheran), and in Asia Minor. It 

 does not appear to occur in any part of Asia, outside our Empire, 

 east of Kashgar, and if it has really occurred in Aracan, that 

 must for the present be considered the easternmost point to 

 which this species has ever attained* 



It seems to occur all over Europe and Northern Africa, the 

 great majority being summer migrants to the northern-half and 

 winter visitants to the southern-half of this vast tract. 



THERE ARE few birds that I have ever shot of whose life- 

 histories I know less. Unlike the Little and, in a minor degree, 

 Baillon's Crake, this species is never seen running about on the 

 leaves of aquatic plants, or indeed, I believe, anywhere in the 

 open, in this country. Dense rice fields are almost the only 

 localities in which I have ever found it, but I have known it 

 also shot out of thick rushes and sedge. I have never seen it, 

 except when, unexpectedly flushed, it rose just before one with 

 a heavy laboured flight, its large legs hanging down behind, 

 to plump down, if not shot at once, within twenty or thirty 

 yards, never again to be seen, beat and bustle as one might. 



* Pallas doubtless seems to intend it to be understood that it occurs in Eastern 

 Siberia, but later writers do not confirm this, and Taczanowski does not admit it 

 into his list of the Birds of Eastern Siberia, which is the latest and best Review of 

 the Avifauna of that region that I have seen. 



