RALLID.E — THE GALLINULES — lONORNIS. 



383 



and was observed to gather lier large family under her wings without making any 

 distinction between them. 



In England many Land-Eails are shot by the sportsmen, and are considered most 

 delicate as articles of food. This bird does not take wing very readily, and flies 

 slowly, with its legs hanging down, seldom going farther than the nearest place of 

 shelter, and is rarely flushed a second time. 



Occasionally, when exposed to dangers from which it is unable to escape, this bird 

 will put on the semblance of death. Jesse narrates a striking instance, in which a 

 Corn-Crake had been brought to a gentleman by his dog, to all appearance quite dead. 

 Standing by in silence, he suddenly saw it open an eye. He then took it up : its head 

 again fell, its legs dropped loosely, and it appeared to be quite dead. He then 

 put it in his pocket, and before long he felt it struggling to escape. He took it out, 

 and it was again as apparently lifeless as before. Having laid it upon the ground 

 and retired to a distance, the bird in a few minutes warily raised its head, looked 

 around, and ran off at full speed. Just before these birds take their departure, in 

 the fall, they congregate together in large flocks. 



The ground-color of the egg of this^ species, when fresh, is a pale reddish white, 

 spotted and speckled with ashy gray and a pale red-brown. It measures — according 

 to Yarrell — 1.50 inches in length by 1.13 inches in breadth. An egg in my collection 

 (Xo. 1389) — given me by Dr. Bachman, and received from Mr. Doubleday — meas- 

 ures 1.50 by 1.10 inches, being oval in shape, one end decidedly tapering. Its ground- 

 color is a light buff with a slightly reddish shade. Tlie markings are few, scattered, 

 and large, nowhere confluent, but larger and more numerous at the obtuse end, and of 

 a rich shade of dark red, with a tendency to brown. It is, in miniature, a fac-simile 

 of the eggs of the common European Gallinule (Gallinula chloropus). 



Genus IONORNIS, Keichenbach. 



n Porphyrula, Blyth, Cat. B. Asiat. Soc. 1849, 283 (type, P. cMoronotus, Bltth). 

 lonornis, Reichenb. Syst. Av. 1853, p. xxi (type, Fnlica martinica, Linn.). 



I. nutrtinica. 



1 The interrogation-mark here implies the doubt existing as to whether the Indian bird is congeneric 

 with the American species. Should such prove to be the case, which we do not regard probable, our bird 

 wouhl stand as Porphyrula martinica. 



