Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/529

Rh and being able, as of yore, to hear its cry while I was in bed. The distribution of the Corn-Crake in the British Islands has been, and is, rather peculiar. It has always favoured the western parts and the north. The older writers on our ornithology (except Turner) seem to have been but little acquainted with it, and their knowledge of its identity even was not too clear. Turner described its habits, &c, well from observations in Northumberland (I quote from Ray's 'Willughby'), but the latter authors rely on his description, merely adding that, "although this bird be more rare in England, yet it is found everywhere in Ireland in great plenty." It is fairly well figured in the 'Ornithology' as "Ortygometra; the Rail or Daker Hen." Charleton (whose first edition was published in 1668) knew next to nothing about it. He applied the name Daker Hen of Turner wrongly, but has the bird under the name Ortygometra, the Raile. "Raro... est cursus velocissimi. Inter herbas & gramen sese abdit ut raro appareat" ('Exercitationes,' 1677). Ray's 'Synopsis' takes us but little farther. "Daker Hen or Rail. In Anglia rarior est. In Hibernia frequens habetur." Pennant writes:—"They are in greatest plenty in Anglesea, where they appear about the twentieth of April, supposed to pass over from Ireland, where they abound; at their first arrival it is common to shoot seven or eight in a morning. They are found in most of the Hebrides, and the Orknies." The Corn-Crake seems to have been always somewhat local in England. In White's day it was quite rare at Selborne, though abundant in Wilts, and about Oxford, where it has become more scarce of late years. The name Corn-Crake (by which the bird is almost invariably known in spring) was not general a century ago. The bird is the Crake Gallinule of Pennant and Montagu, the latter giving Corn-Crake, Crek, or Cracker as provincial names. But Corn-Crake is an old name, and apparently originated in the north. We find "Corn-crek" as early as 1684 in the 'Prodromus H. N. Scotiæ' of Robert Sibbald, and "Corn-craker," in 1716, in Martin's 'Description of the Western Islands of Scotland' (Pennant). Forster, in his 'Catalogue' (1817), however, has Corncrake as his first English name.

Along some parts of the southern coast we find some grass marshes, noisy in June with the constant screams of numbers of