196 SPOTTED CRAKE 
concealed under the thick growth of the last year’s grass 
rushes, in one case by the side of a small low willow 
bush. 
I have two eggs, found by Mr. T. Morrison with the help 
of a dog in the marshy land on the Congary, near Peel, and 
this was the only information I had gathered as to its 
breeding in Man till Mr. Graves’s discovery as above noted. 
Mr, Allison has since told me that the nest has been found 
in the neighbourhood of a small ‘dub’ in Maughold. 
A single specimen is registered in the Chief Constable’s 
Game Record for 1903, In earlier years I have more than 
once seen the bird in dealers’ shops at Douglas. On 10th 
March 1905 I flushed a Water-rail, doubtless resting on 
migration, from one of the little stony pools on Scarlett 
Point, It immediately dropped into another and disappeared, 
no doubt beneath one of the huge boulders scattered about 
both land and water, for other cover there was none. 
It is resident around the Irish Sea, but on the English 
shores is not known to nest except rarely. It breeds ex- 
tensively, and sometimes even abundantly, in Ireland. It 
occurs in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney, and Shetland, but its 
breeding in the last, and perhaps at present in the second, 
is doubtful. In Great Britain it is generally distributed, 
but rarer in Scotland. 
PORZANA MARUETTA (Leach). SPOTTED 
CRAKE, 
The late Mr, Jeffcott reported a specimen obtained by 
him in autumn while snipe-shooting, probably in the 
seventies, and in the Castletown neighbourhood. 
A Spotted Crake, shot at Greeba on February 1885, and 
