42 RAIL TRIBE 



from stone-buff to reddish clay ; and upon this they are spotted with 

 reddish brown, tending sometimes to blackish, the spots being always 

 small, and in some cases reduced to mere specks. In length they vary 

 between rather more than an inch and a half, and just over two inches. 



In describing a late brood of j'oung moor-hens hatched near 

 Sheffield an observer states that the nest was built on a bunch of 

 holly branches fastened in the middle of the pond ; and that the 

 members of the earlier broods would come and visit their younger 

 brethren. No objection to this was taken by the parents, and on one 

 occasion the two parents, a full-grown chick, and the nestlings were 

 seen together on and in the nest, while two immature birds were 

 swimming round. 



A peculiar phase of the moor-hen in which the feathers were so 

 slender as to recall hairs has been recorded. More common, although 

 decidedly rare, are pied and other semi-albinos, but pure albinos seem 

 to be unknown. Of such pied moor-hens two examples are exhibited 

 in the British Museum, in one of which the arrangement of the black 

 and white is very symmetrical, and forms a strikingly handsome com- 

 bination. In a third example, killed near Ringwood, in Hampshire, 

 the head, neck, and breast were of the normal dark hue, but from the 

 shoulders to the tail there was more black than white, with the under- 

 parts and some of the wing-quills wholly white, one of the wings dis- 

 playing the remarkable peculiarity of having the quills alternately dark 

 and white. 



Here it may be well to notice that stray specimens of the beautiful 

 purple water-hens {Porphyrio) have been occasionally taken in British 

 inland waters, but there is little doubt that in all such instances the 

 birds had escaped from confinement, and even if this was not so, their 

 names could have no possible right to cumber the British list. 



In the great majority of works on British birds this 



,„ ,. species is entered as the "common coot," but as a 



(Fuliea atra), ' ^ ^ ,, , , ,. . , , 



matter of fact, at all events when deahng with the 



fauna (A our own islands, it requires no such prefix, as to it alone the 



name "coot" properly applies. It is the foreign species of Fuliea, of 



which there are about a dozen, ranging over the warmer parts of the 



whole world, that require distinctive prefixes. While they have a 



somewhat similar leathery saddle at the base of the beak, the coots 



differ from the moor-hens in that their long toes are fringed on each 



side by a broad flap of skin or membrane, which is divided into 



convex lobes, corresponding in number with the joints, and likewise by 



