i6 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG i 
Towards the end of the year 1893, in rank grasses 
growing about an overflowing dam on Woolloomanata, j 
near the Peak, I found several empty nests which | 
I have always thought were this bird's, as they were ; 
too small for Land-rails' and rather large for the j 
smaller Rails'. They were built up to a height of 
about 6 inches from the water, where the grass grew ' 
thickest, and were themselves of dry grass, neatly j 
compact. However, as I saw no birds, I must just | 
quote the incident and leave it, with the further \ 
remark that a friend told me he had found Rails' \ 
eggs in the same place a year or two before. ] 
\ 
LAND-RAIL ^ 
Hypotcenidia philippensis australis 
j 
Found throughout the length and breadth of the j 
continent as well as in Tasmania, the Land-rail 
(marked by his white-barred breast and white eye- j 
stripe) is the only Rail that can be described as com- - 
mon, and then only in a relative sense. As I recall { 
my memories of the species I find they are quite few, j 
and widely separate in time. Curious it is how, when ■ 
one thinks of any given kind of bird, it seems to come j 
up to the mind's eye in a series of shifting pictures. , 
Now it is an excursion train roaring down, on a Sunday * 
evening, from Bacchus Marsh to Melbourne, full of 
tired, happy people, quorum pars minima fui, A , 
party of city lads, faces flushed with the October ; 
