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 Hallus, 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 Crex 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- 

 zana, and the other two, little 

 birds not much bigger than 

 Larks, are considered to form 

 a genus Zapornia. The first 

 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 Hypotds- 

 nidia, having a repre- 

 sentative almost every- 

 where from India to 

 China, and far away 



' , . , , , J HYPOT^NIDIA. (From Buller.) 



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 

 COOT and MOOR-HEN, to say nothing of other still more interesting 

 forms of the Family, as the already extinct Aphanapteryx and 

 Erythromachus 1 (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 (Ann. Sc. Nat. 

 ser. 6, vii. art. 2) to the neighbourhood of the Rails, though 

 offering some points of resemblance to the Herons. 2 On the 



1 By an oversight this genus was called Miserythrus in the passage quoted. 

 (For it see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1875, p. 41.) 



2 The FINFOOTS and JACANAS, by some systematists formerly placed with 

 the Rallidse, to which the former certainly have some affinity, should be 

 regarded as forming distinct Families, HeliornitMdas and Parridse, The 



