1 68 RALLIDiE. 



also kill and devour their young, and is on that account a 

 dangerous neighbour. Its usual food is aquatic insects and 

 their larvae, slugs, beetles, worms, grass-shoots, and grain, 

 when procurable. The call-note is a loud crek-rek-rek 

 several times repeated, and especially towards evening. 



The Moor-hen is generally distributed throughout the 

 British Islands, and as a rule is resident, but in the colder 

 districts of the north it migrates southward in winter. An 

 irregular visitant to the Faeroes, it breeds sparingly in 

 Norway and Sweden ; nor does it range far north in 

 Russia ; but south of the Baltic it appears to be generally 

 distributed where localities are suitable, breeding throughout 

 Northern and Central and Southern Europe down to the 

 Mediterranean, and also on the African side, where, how- 

 ever, the migrants are in the majority. In the Canaries, 

 Madeira, and the Azores it is resident, and its course can 

 be traced down the West Coast of Africa to Cape Colony, 

 and round that continent by Mozambique and the islands of 

 Reunion and the Seychelles, up to Abyssinia, and so back 

 to Egypt. Eastward it is generally diffused throughout 

 Asia as far north as Darasun and Kultuk, where Dybowski 

 obtained both eggs and birds ; and southwards throughout 

 India, Ceylon, the Philippines, China, and Japan up to 

 the North Island, being generally resident and partially 

 migratory, according to the influences of cold at the 

 loftier elevations, or the want of suitable moist localities 

 in the hot low countries. Upon this subject Mr. H. 

 Parker (Ibis, 1883, p. 195) has contributed the results 

 of some interesting observations made in the Mannar 

 district in North-western Ceylon, tending to show that 

 the migration thither for breeding purposes is the result 

 of the food- supply produced by the establishment of tanks 

 about 2,000 years ago. In considering the birds resi- 

 dent over this wide area as belonging to the same species, 

 it must be mentioned that there are certain local races of 

 the ]\Ioor-hen, and that both the Indian and the African 

 forms are slightly shorter in the wing than examples 

 from Western Europe : the frontal plate is also larger in 



