2iee RALLIDZ#, RAILS, ETC. 
Family RALLIDA, Rails, etc. 
This is a large and important family, abundantly represented in most parts of 
the world. They are birds of medium and small size, generally with compressed 
body and large strong legs (the muscularity of the thighs is very noticeable), 
enabling them to run rapidly and thread with ease the mazes of the reedy marshes 
to which they are almost exclusively confined; while by means of their very long 
toes they are prevented from sinking in the mire or the floating vegetation. The 
wings are never long and pointed as among Limicole, being in fact of the shortest, 
most rounded and concave form found among waders; and the flight is rarely 
protracted to any great distance. The tail is always very short, generally of 10 or 
12 soft feathers. Details of the bill and feet vary with the genera; but the former 
is never sensitive at the tip, and the latter have the hallux longer and lower down 
than it is in the shore-birds. The nostrils are pervious, of variable shape. The 
head is completely feathered; the general plumage is ordinarily of subdued and 
blended coloration, lacking much of the variegation commonly observed in shore- 
birds ; the sexes are usually alike, and the changes of plumage not great with age 
or season. The food, never probed for in the mud, but gathered from the surface 
of the ground or water, consists of a variety of aquatic animal and vegetable 
substances. The nest is a rude structure, placed on the ground, or in a tuft of reeds 
or other herbage; the eggs are numerous, generally variegated in color; the young 
are hatched clothed. The general habit is gregarious, and migratory ; many species 
occur in vast multitudes, though their skulking ways, and the nature of their 
resorts, withdraw them from casual observation. Some species swim habitually. 
There appear to be upward of 150 species of the family, falling in several well 
“marked groups. The Ocydromine are an Old World type of some 35 species, 
ranking with some authors as a distinct family. Mr. Gray makes the African 
Himantornis hematopus the type and single representative of another subfamily. 
Excluding the Purride and Heliornithide (see p. 241), both of which are sometimes 
brought under Fallidce, as subfamilies, the three remaining groups are represented 
in this country. i 
Subfamily RALLINA. Rails. 
This is the largest, and central or typical, group, to which most of the foregoing 
paragraph is especially applicable. The species are strictly paludicole; the 
compression of the body is at a maximum; the form is blunt and thick behind, 
with a very short tip-up tail, and tapers to a point in front; the whole figure being 
thus adapted to wedge through narrow places. The wings are extremely short and 
rounded, and the ordinary flight appears feeble and vacillating, though the migra- 
tions of many species are very extensive. The flank-feathers are commonly 
enlarged and conspicuously colored; the thighs are very muscular; the tibiz are 
generally if not always naked below; the toes are long, completely cleft, without 
lobes or any obvious marginal membranes. The bill occurs under two principal 
modifications: in allus proper it is longer than the head, slender, compressed, 
slightly curved, long-grooved, with linear nostrils; in most genera, however, it is 
shorter or not longer than the head, straight, rather stout, with short broad nasal 
fossze, and linear-oblong nostrils—altogether somewhat as in gallinaceous birds. 
The culmen more or less obviously parts antial extension of the frontal feathers, 
but never forms a frontal shield, as in the coots and gallinules. Of the 3d 
