Sir W. Jardine on the Habits of Crotophaga. 1 63 



particularly their activity on the ground and propensity to hide 

 from danger, we are reminded also of the Grallatores ; many 

 members of both orders run with great swiftness and thread 

 their way with ease through thick herbage and tangled reeds. 

 The Rallidcs among the latter show much activity, and natu- 

 rally live in places rank with vegetation, and the knife-like bill 

 of Crotophaga, the superciliar bristles, and the strong shafts 

 to the feathers of the forehead, all bear analogy to the defences 

 upon the bill and head of the rails and their allies. The inter- 

 nal structure of the bird, which we shall notice hereafter, ex- 

 hibits little affinity to either of these orders, Mr. Kirk has 

 thus described their manners in a letter received from him 

 during the last winter : — 



" This bird, with his grotesque bill, is only of recent appear- 

 ance in this island. I am informed that the first pair seen 

 here was in the years 1822 or 1823 : at that period however 

 there were few individuals here who devoted the smallest por- 

 tion of their leisure to the pursuit of natural history, and hence 

 a strange bird might for a short time have evaded the observa- 

 tion of those who took no interest in such matters. But when 

 we look to the noisy and obtrusive habits of the bird itself, 

 combined with its singular whistling note and very singularly 

 shaped bill, and seeing its haunts are strictly confined within 

 the limits of our cultivation, and more especially to low lands 

 in the vicinity of what we call clear pastures or low shrubberies, 

 swamps, &c., we are constrained to believe that a single pair 

 could scarcely have located themselves for any length of time 

 in any quarter of the island without exciting the curiosity and 

 arresting the attention of some individual. 



" On my arrival here, in January 1825, there were only a 

 very few specimens to be met with, and those few were shy, 

 an attribute which seems to desert them as they increase in 

 numbers, for the general impression entertained by any calm 

 observer {en passant) would be that they could kill at any hour 

 or any day at least five or six at a single shot, and that that 

 may sometimes be done I will admit while they cluster upon 

 the tops of dry shrubs morning and evening pluming and ad- 

 justing their feathers, for it is to trees or shrubs containing 

 the least foliage that they chiefly resort for this purpose, 



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