AUGUST 199 



this as a platform, Porphyrio thrusts his head below 

 water, seizes one of the rushes in his powerful beak, 

 and tugs at it till it comes up from the root. Now 

 this is a very remarkable performance. To test the 

 strength required, I attached a cord to one of these 

 rushes, and hooked a steelyard to the cord. At a 

 pull of ten pounds the rush broke at the cord, but the 

 root part remained firm. This happened repeatedly; 

 it seems difficult to believe that a bird not so large 

 as a guinea-fowl standing on an insecure float- 

 ing platform of rushes, can pull a weight of ten 

 pounds, yet Porphyrio and his mate pulled up 

 fifty of these rushes in my presence with a peculiar 

 jerking motion. Well, having dragged it up, the 

 bird passes it rapidly along with his beak till he 

 arrive at the white succulent end ; then seizing the rush, 

 parrot-like, in one of his enormous red feet, he holds 

 it up and nips away at the pith, eating very fast, and 

 with as much relish, apparently, as unfeathered bipeds 

 devour asparagus. The devastation of the rushes is 

 appalling, and what these birds will turn to when they 

 have exhausted the supply remains to be seen. Their 

 flight is powerful, and the danger is that they may 

 leave us and fall before the gun of some booby who 

 shoots every bird that he does not recognise. Scirpus 

 lacustris is not a common rush in the north, and 

 possibly Porphyrio may have to put up with some 

 inferior delicacy till the beds of that plant have 

 recovered. Meanwhile these gallinules, with a bed of 

 Monsieur Marliac's rose-coloured water-lilies floating 



