226 THE BROWN AND ASHY CRAKE. 



add, distinctly notes that his specimens came from the Siliguri 

 Tarai. 



Eastwards of the Brahmaputra we know nothing of its range. 

 Mr. Chennell obtained a specimen near the base of the North 

 Khasia Hills, and that is absolutely the only record of its occur- 

 rence in Assam. 



I cannot learn that it has ever been found in any part of 

 Aracan, Pegu, or Tenasserim, nor do I believe that it occurs 

 anywhere outside our limits. 



Vague as this summary of the distribution of this species is, it 

 is the most accurate that the facts on record and my own long- 

 continued observations, supplemented by those of some fifty- 

 odd correspondents, enable me to furnish ; and it is to be hoped 

 that, now that they can easily identify this and the other allied 

 species, sportsmen will shoot these birds wherever they meet 

 with them and record the fact. 



ACCORDING to my experience, this species is less aquatic in its 

 habits than any of our other Crakes, and on this and other, 

 chiefly structural, grounds I have had doubts of the propriety 

 of retaining it in the genus Porzana. Very often, especially 

 in the early mornings, you will see this bird running about on 

 bare ground, and even on stones and rocks, near indeed to water, 

 but still quite in the open ; and it habitually frequents pools of 

 water and those small deep-sunk reservoirs which are commonly 

 called open wells in Rajputana, about which there are only a 

 few tufts of grass and a few bushes and none of that dense 

 growth of aquatic herbage which all the other species specially 

 affect. 



Moreover, they more habitually swim about and are more 

 thoroughly Water-Hens in all their habits than the rest of the 

 Crakes. 



Its food, too, although similar to that of the other species, 

 includes a far larger proportion of tiny snail and other shells 

 and of worms and slugs. 



It is much less frequently found in regular swamps and 

 marshes, much most commonly in comparatively thin and 

 often only bush cover on or near the margins of clear water, 

 very often of running streams and water-courses, not unfrequently 

 of ponds and the so-called open wells. I never once saw it walk- 

 ing about over the leaf-covered surface of weed-choked water. 

 It climbs, too, like the White-breasted Water-Hen, and may be 

 found resting many feet above the ground in bushes of different 

 kinds — a thing I never noticed in any of our other Crakes. 



It runs, flies, swims and walks for all the world like a Common 

 Water-Hen, of course, jerking its tail and nodding its wise little 

 head just as this latter bird does under similar circumstances. 



It is as a rule only in the early mornings, and just before 

 sunset, that you will see them in the open ; but after a good fall 



