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There are two specimens in the Museum. SPOTTED CRAKE. Porzana maruetta, Leach. French, "Poule d'eau marouette."

From this roadside I have seldom heard the corncrake, and never once the grasshopper lark. These two birds are so characteristic of the meadows in southwestern counties that a summer evening seems silent to me without the "crake, crake!" of the one and the singular sibilous rattle of the other.

Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn.

The Beorminster reporters visited the police station and endeavoured to learn what Inspector Tinkler thought. He had seen the body, he had viewed the spot where it had been found, he had examined the carter, Giles Crake, so he was the man most likely to give satisfactory answers to the questions as to who had killed the man, and why he had been shot.

He had no expectation of beating the School House long distance runner, but he hoped for second place; and second place would mean the cup, for there was nobody to beat either himself or Crake. The distance of the long run was as nearly as possible five miles.

I have some doubt as to the propriety of including the Spotted Crake in my list, but, on the whole, such evidence as I have been able to collect seems in favour of its being at all events occasionally seen and shot, though its small size and shy skulking habits keep it very much from general notice. Mr. MacCulloch, however, writes to me to say the Spotted Rail has been found here; and one of Mr.

Milligan led from the start, increased his lead at the end of the first lap, doubled it half-way through the second, and finally, with a dazzling sprint in the last seventy yards, lowered the Eckleton record by a second and three-fifths, and gave his house three points. Kennedy, who stuck gamely to his man for half the first lap, was beaten on the tape by Crake, of Mulholland's.

"But the wreck!" exclaimed the Chief Officer. "It's out of reason!" "Hi! What was that?" "Oh, my good Lord," groaned one of the volunteers, "it's the crake, master! It's Langona crake calling the drowned!" "Hush, you fool! Listen I thought as much! Light a flare. Mr. Saul he's out there calling!" The first match spluttered and went out.

But to balance the mile there was the quarter, and in the mile Kennedy contrived to beat Crake by much the same number of feet as Crake had beaten him by in the half. The scores of the two houses were now level, and a goodly number of the School House certainties were past. Dencroft's forged ahead again by virtue of the quarter-mile.

These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails.