764 



RAIL 



The various species of Rails, whether allied to the former or 

 latter of those just mentioned, are far too numerous to be here 

 noticed. Hardly any part of the world is without a representative 

 of the genera Grex or Eallus, and every considerable country has 

 one or perhaps more of each — though it has been the habit of 

 systematists to refer them to many other genera, the characters of 

 which are with diflficulty found. Thus in Europe alone three 

 other species allied to Crex pratensis occur more or less abundantly ; 

 but one of them, the Spotted Rail or Crake, has been made the 



type of a so-called genus Pur- 

 zcnia, and the other two, little 

 bii'ds not much bigger than 

 Larks, are considered to form 

 a genus Zapornia. The first 

 of these, which used not to 

 be uncommon in the eastern 

 part of England, has a very near representative in the Carolina 

 Rail or Sora, Crex Carolina, of North America, often there miscalled 

 the Ortolan, just as its 

 European analogue, C. 

 porzana, is in England ' 

 often termed the Dot- 

 terel. Then there is the 

 widely -ranging Hypotx- 

 nidia, having a repre- 

 sentative almost every- 

 where from India to 

 China, and far away 

 among the islands to the 



PORZAXA. Zapornia. 



(After Swainson.) 



Htpot^nidia. (From Buller.) 



south-east, even to New Zealand, while at least one example has 

 been known to reach Mauritius. But, passing over these as well as 

 some belonging to genera that .can be much better defined, as the 

 Coot and Moor-hen, to say nothing of other still more interesting 

 forms of the Family, as the already extinct Aphaiwpteryx and 

 Eri/fhromachv.s'^ (EXTERMINATION, pp. 217, 218), Oriidromns 

 (Weka) and certain other members of the Family which there 

 is reason to think are doomed to extirpation, brief notice must 

 be taken of the curious genus Mesites of Madagascar, which has 

 been referred by Prof. Alphonse Milne-Edwards {Ann. Sc. Naf. 

 ser. 6, vii. art. 2) to the neighbourhood of the Rails, though 

 offering some points of resemblance to the Herons.- On the 



^ By an oversight this geuus was called Mlscrytlirus in the passage quoted. 

 (For it see Proc. Zool. Hoc. 1875, p. 41.) 



- The FiNFOOTS and Jacaxas, by some systematists formerly placed with 

 tlie Rcdlidm, to which the former certainly have some affinity, should be 

 regarded as forming distinct Families, Heliornithidae. and Parridas. Tlie 



