762 RACE-HORSE— RAIL 



B 



EACE- HORSE, a name applied by seamen to the Logger- 

 head Duck (p. 518) for more than a century, but of late years 

 superseded by that of Steamer-Duck. 



RACQUET-TAIL, a name given to several of the Motmots, 

 and by Gould to HuMMiNG-BiRDS of the genus Spathura. 



RADIUS, the straighter and more slender of the two bones of 

 the foreai-m (the other being the ulna). Its proximal end forms a 

 shallow cup for articulation with the outer condyle of the HUMERUS, 

 while the distal end bears a knob which fits into the radial bone 

 of the CARPUS. 



RAFTER-BIRD, a local name of the Spotted Flycatcher. 



RAIL (German Ralle, French Rale, Low Latin Rallus), origin- 

 ally the English name of two birds, distinguished from one another 

 by a prefix as Land-Rail and Water-Rail, but latterly applied in a 

 much wider sense to all the species which are included in the 

 Family Rallidse. 



The Land-Rail, also very commonly known as the Corn-Crake, 

 and sometimes as the Daker-Hen, is the Rallus crex of Linnaeus 

 and Crex pratensis of later authors. Its monotonous grating cry, 

 which has given it its common name in several languages, is a 

 familiar sound throughout the summer-nights in many parts of 

 the British Islands ; but the bird at that season very seldom shews 

 itself, except when the mower lays bare its nest, the owner of 

 which, if it escape beheading by the scythe, may be seen for an 

 instant before it disappears into the friendly covert of the still- 

 standing grass. In early autiimn the partridge-shooter not un- 

 frequently flushes it from a clover-field or tangled hedgerow ; and, 

 as it rises with apparent labour and slowly flies away to drop into 

 the next place of concealment, if it fall not to his gun, he wonders 

 how so weak-winged a creature can ever make its way to the 

 shores if not to the interior of Africa, whither it is almost certainly 

 bound ; for, with comparatively few individual exceptions, the 

 Land-Rail is essentially migratory — nay more than that, it is the 

 Ortygometra of classical authors — -supposed by them to lead the 

 Quail on its voyages — and in the course of its wanderings has now 

 been known to reach the coast of Greenland, and several times that 

 of North America, to say nothing of Bermuda, in every instance we 

 may believe as a straggler from Europe or Barbary. An example has 

 even been recorded from New South Wales {Rec. Austral. Mus. ii. 



