BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 103 



vain, for if there were either, the concealment was too com- 

 plete. The location abounded with wild rice and reeds, as those 

 in which 1 had so often heard its notes did. Since then I have 

 secured several, and have had it reported by different corres- 

 pondents from widely severed sections of the province with 

 which my investigations are specially concerned. The earliest 

 record of its observance is May 5th, and I think will not soon 

 be found much earlier, for from an average in my personal 

 notes I find they arrive about the twelfth to the fifteenth. 



The exact date it is impossible to arrive at, as their move- 

 ments are in the night. That they breed in many sections can- 

 not be reasonably doubted after having been observed so many 

 times in June and July, although no nests nor young broods 

 have yet been found. They appear to have all gone from those 

 localities where hitherto found, by the fifth to the tenth of Sep- 

 tember, although from the variability of the seasons from year 

 to year, instances may occur in which they will be met with 

 still later. Their food is principally leeches, worms, snails, 

 and aquatic insects, but in the season when seeds and grains 

 are ripe, they fatten readily upon them, as we are informed by 

 several writers. This is the largest species of the Rails in the 

 United States, as well as the most beautiful. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Upper parts olive brown, with longitudinal stripes of brown- 

 ish-black, most numerous on the back; line from the base of 

 the bill over the eye. dull orange-yellow; space before and be- 

 hind the eye brownish- cinerous; throat and lower eyelid white; 

 neck before and breast, bright rufous-chestnut; sides, abdomen, 

 and under tail coverts, with transverse bands, of brownish - 

 black and white, the dark bands being the wider; tibia dull 

 yellowish- white, with spots and transverse bars of ashy brown; 

 upper wing coverts reddish- chestnut; under wing coverts 

 black, with transverse lines of white. 



Length, 17; wing, 6.50; tail, 3. 



Habitat, United States. 



RALLUS YIRGINIANUS L. (212.) 

 VIRGINIA RAIL. 

 This bird is very generally distributed over the country where 

 the conditions exist for its maintenance. No one can tell just 

 how or when they arrive, but either very early in the morning 

 or late in the twilight at evening. Like its congeners, it is 

 somewhat of a nocturnal sjDecies and makes its pilgrimages, as 

 well as its local excursions in the gray of the morning or in the 



-8z 



