Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/413

Rh snails, some whole, and many ground to pieces through the attrition which is occasioned by the muscular force and motion of that intestine. We saw no gravels among the food: perhaps the shell snails might perform the functions of gravels or pebbles, and might grind one another. Land-rails used to abound formerly, I remember, in the low wet bean-fields of Christian Malford in North Wilts, and in the meadows near Paradise Gardens at Oxford, where I have often heard them cry crex, crex. The bird mentioned above weighed seven and a half ounces, was fat and tender, and in flavour like the flesh of a woodcock. The liver was very large and delicate.—.



Land-rails are more plentiful with us than in the neighbourhood of Selborne. I have found four brace in an afternoon, and a friend of mine lately shot nine in two adjoining fields; but I never saw them in any other season than the autumn.

That it is a bird of passage there can be little doubt, though Mr. White thinks it poorly qualified for migration, on account of the wings being short, and not placed in the exact centre of gravity; how that may be I cannot say, but I know that its heavy sluggish