No. 34.] BIRD NAMES. ' 125 



throat white; front of neck and breast nearly plain tan, or 

 reddish cinnamon, this changing to a whitish mixture on lower 

 surface of body ; sides, flanks, and about thighs barred broad- 

 ly with dark brown or black, and narrowly with white ; the 

 feathers immediately beneath the tail white, with touches of 

 black and blackish brown. Bill blackish brown on top and at 

 end, remainder brownish yellow. Legs yellowish brown with 

 grayish olive tinge. 



Length seventeen and a half to nineteen inches ; extent 

 twenty -three and a half to twenty -five inches ; bill two and 

 one eighth to two and a half inches. 



Range, as given in A. O. U. Check List, 1886: "Fresh-water 

 marshes of the Eastern Province of the United States, from the 

 Middle States, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kansas south- 

 ward. Casually north to Massachusetts, Maine, and Ontario." 



KING RAIL : a name given also to No. 33, the present species, 

 however, being the King Rail of " the books." Audubon speaks 

 of killing " one female [of No. 34] in New Jersey, a few miles from 

 Camden, in July, 1832," and " on inquiring of numerous hunt- 

 ers," was told " that they now and then obtained a few of these 

 birds, which they considered as very rare, and knew only by the 

 name of ' King Rails.' " (See No. 33 for name King Ortolan.) 



Also termed, in print at least, GREAT RED-BREASTED RAIL, 

 FRESH-WATER MARSH-HEN (see No. 36), FRESH- MARSH HEN, 

 and FRESH-WATER HEN. 



Very generally known throughout the South as MARSH- 

 HEN simply, sharing this name, however, indiscriminately with 

 the more common &z2-water Marsh-hen, No. 35, a similar bird, 

 confused with the present species by many gunners, as it was, 

 indeed, by Wilson,* the " father of American ornithology." 



* Audubon, who exposed this confusion, wrote as follows : " No doubt 

 exists in my mind that Wilson considered this beautiful bird as merely the 

 adult of Rallu* crepitan [No. 86], the manners of which he described, as 

 studied at Great Egg Harbor, in New Jersey, while he gave in his works the 

 figure and coloring of the present species. My friend Thomas Nuttall has 

 done the same, without, I apprehend, having seen the two birds together." 



