THE J AC AN AS. 



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Moor-hens, but they are more variegated in colour than either these birds or the rest of the Rails. 

 The voung birds, however, are not so handsomely coloured as the adults. 



THE PHEASANT-TAILED JACANA (Hi/drophasianiis chinirgns). 



This is the largest of all the Jacanas, and is a native of India and Ceylon, where it inhabits 

 jheels, marshes, and reedy banks, but it is rather bolder in. its habits than the other Indian species. 

 Dr. Jerdon says that the breeding plumage is assumed very early, as he has seen some specimens 

 with their summer dress and long tail in February, so that it is probable that some birds do not 

 always put on a winter dress ; as a rule, however, they do not change till May or June. According to 

 the same observer, it makes a large floating nest of dried pieces of grass and herbage, sometimes, 

 according to other accounts, of the stalks of growing rice, which it bends downwards and intertwines, 

 and it lays in July and August from four to seven eggs, occasionally more, of a fine bronze brown or 

 green. It has a loud call, likened by some to the mewing of a cat or a kitten in distress, by others to 

 the distant cry of a hound ; an imitation of the soiind is attempted in the Hindustani names Piho and 

 Meewah. The Cingalese also, according to Layard, call it Cat-Teal. Like the other Indian species, it 

 feeds chiefly on vegetable matter, but also on shells and water insects. In Purneah the natives say 

 that before the inundation, i.e., before the breeding season, it calls Dub, dub "Go under water;" 

 and afterwards in the cold weather, Powar, which, in Purneah dialect, means "next year." In winter 

 this species is gregarious. If only wounded it is difficult to find, as, like the English Moor-hen, it dives 

 at once and remains with its bill only out of the water. The flesh is said to be excellent. Blyth states 



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