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 Crex or Fallus, 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 difficulty found. Thus in Europe alone three 
other species allied to Crea 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 Por- 
cand, and the other two, little 
birds not much bigger than 
Larks, are considered to form 
a genus Zaporma. The first 
PORZANA, ZAPORNIA. : 
(Attar Siraiuséne) 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 [Hypote- 
nidia, having a repre- 
sentative almost every- 
where from India to 
China, and far away 
among the islands to the 
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 
Coor and Moor-HEN, to say nothing of other still more interesting 
forms of the Family, as the already extinct Aphanapteryx and 
Erythromachus! (EXTERMINATION, pp. 217, 218), Ocydromus 
(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 (din. Se. Nat. 
ser. 6, vil. art. 2) to the neighbourhood of the Rails, though 
offering some points of resemblance to the Herons.2 On the 
Hyrorenipia. (From Buller.) 
1 By an oversight this genus was called Miserythrus in the passage quoted. 
(For it see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1875, p. 41.) 
* The Finroors and JAcANAs, by some systematists formerly placed with 
the Rallide, to which the former certainly have some affinity, should be 
regarded as forming distinct Families, Heliornithide and Parride. The 
