RALLIDA. 533 
Family RALLID®, or RAILS. 
The Rails are a fairly well-defined group of birds. Sclater places them 
in an Order by themselves between the Hemipodes and the Cranes and 
Bustards ; but Forbes removed them from the vicinity of the Cranes, and 
associated them with the Bustards and the Stone-Curlews, in a group 
which comprised also the Game Birds and the Cuckoos; whilst Gadow 
places them near the Cranes. 
The Rails resemble the Herons and the Storks in having one deep notch 
on each side of the sternum, but in the modification of their cranial bones 
they do not belong to the same great group, being placed by Huxley 
near the Cranes, the Bustards, the Sandpipers, and other schizognathous 
birds. This position appears to be confirmed by their pterylosis, myology, 
and digestive organs, in all of which they show very close relationship to 
the Cranes and Bustards. 
Amongst the Rails, as in the Game Birds, genera are to be found the 
birds of which only moult once in the year, whilst others have a spring as 
well as an autumn moult. To the former group, so far as is known, belong 
the true Rails, the Waterhens, and the Coots, that moult only in autumn, 
and attain their spring plumage by casting the ends of the feathers, which 
may also increase in brilliancy of colour without being moulted. To the 
latter group belong the Crakes, the Palearctic species of which have a 
spring as well as an autumn moult. 
The principal external characters of the Rails are their large feet (the 
hind toe being slightly elevated), comparatively short tarsus, short stout 
beak, and rounded wings and short tail (the former containing ten primaries 
and the latter composed of twelve feathers). The young of the Rails, like 
those of many other birds that breed on the ground, are covered with down 
when they are hatched, and are able to run almost immediately. 
There are about 150 species of Rails, which are found throughout the 
world, except in the Arctic Region. Nine species breed in Europe, and 
two others are occasional stragglers to that continent; of these seven are 
British. 
Genus CREX. 
The Crakes were included by Linnzeus in his genus Radlus, from which 
Bechstein in 1808, in his ‘ Ornithologisches Taschenbuch’ (ii. p. 336), 
removed the Corn-Crake (the Rallus crex of Linneus), making it the type 
of a new genus, Crex. 
