GALLINULA DIMIDIATA. 



Young Female. — The top of the head and the back of the neck umber- 

 brown, variegated with spots of yellowish brown, generally four of these 

 towards the tip of each feather, two upon the outer, and two upon the inner 

 vane; the back, the shoulders, the primary and secondary quill coverts, some 

 of the tertiary quill feathers, the upper and under tail coverts, and the tail 

 dark liver brown, variegated with slender yellowish brown bars or dots ; the 

 bars are generally two or three on each feather, more or less undulated, and 

 mostly interrupted at some part of their course, the variegations on the quill 

 coverts, tertiary quill feathers, and tail are generally very few in number, 

 sometimes they are entirely wanting. The chin tawny white, the sides of 

 the head and neck, the throat, the breast and the belly umber brown, rather 

 profusely marked with angular or curved bars of deep yellowish brown ; the 

 ground colour as well as the bars darkest on the sides of the breast and 

 belly ; towards the middle of these regions the tints are lightest, and the 

 bars are generally indistinct. Primary and secondary quill feathers brownish 

 red, and the outer vane of the first primary of each wing edged either with 

 a series of delicate tawny white steaks, or a continuous line of that colour. 

 The bill and legs dark reddish brown. 



While examining this species, and the two others figured in this number, I liad constantly 

 before me twenty other species, which are considered by many authors as belonging either 

 to Gallinula, or to Crex {Porzana, Vieillot) ; but as I could not discover any characters by 

 which the limits of these two groupes could be satisfactorily fixed, I have deemed it better 

 to regard those birds as forming in reality only one groupe. I was, indeed, able to select 

 out of the whole number four, or rather five species, which differed materially from each 

 other, viz. FuUca chloropus, Lin.; Rallus Porzana, Gm. Lin.; Rallus crex, Lin.; Rallus 

 pusillus, Gm. Lin., and the species just described ; and I doubt not, had I been unacquainted 

 with any other species than those, I should have regarded the characters which they indi- 

 vidually presented, as sufficient to warrant my viewing them as all belonging to different 

 groupes ; when, however, I compared their characters with those exhibited by the species 

 from whence it had been necessary to separate them, in order to have definable peculiarities, 

 such a number of intermediate modifications were observed, as rendered it impossible to say 

 between what two species of the whole number the greatest hiatus existed, or where the lines 

 of demarcation could be fixed. 



Gallinula dimidiata is by no means a common bird in South Africa, though it is occasion- 

 ally procured even in the neighbourhood of Cape Town. It frequents marshy situations, and 

 resides among the reeds and long rushes, with which such localities generally abound, 

 and where stagnant waters occur near its haunts, it is said to enter them, and to swim with 

 facility, and even occasionally to cross them in quest of its food, which consists of insects, 

 mollusca, &c. When walking or running it, like Gallinula chloropus, carries its tail erect. 



