COMMON GALLINULE. 335 



On comparing together a great number of European and American 

 specimens, I can find no specific differences. Individuals of either kind 

 are larger or smaller, their frontal plates differ in size and somewhat in 

 form, as do the bill and the claws ; but if the species are really diffe- 

 rent, Nature has made them so wonderfully like each other, that there 

 seems to me no possibility of distinguishing them. 



My friend Dr Neill has furnished me with the following anecdotes 

 illustrative of the habits of this bird. " At Canonmills Loch, near Edin- 

 burgh, a pair (or sometimes two pairs) of water-hens breed yearly, mak- 

 ing their nest on the branches of some very large saughs (willow-trees, 

 Salix russeliana) growing in my garden, and overhanging the pond. One 

 season (four or five years ago) finding themselves persecuted by a tame 

 heron, which watched and devoured their first young brood (for we de- 

 tected him in the act), they formed their next nest more than fifteen feet 

 high on the trunk of the willow-tree. There the eggs were hatched in 

 safety, four or five young being in due time seen sailing about with the 

 old birds. We had only one pair on the Loch last summer. How they 

 descended to the water can only be conjectured : they might have crept 

 downwards three or four feet, but they must at all events have fallen at 

 once from a height of not less than twelve feet. When the pond is frozen 

 over and covered with skaters, the water-hens enter the garden and con- 

 ceal themselves in an overgrown rock-work, subsisting on minced flesh 

 mixed with bread or potatoes, purposely laid down for them, and on which 

 I have often watched them feasting when the snow was lying deep." 



