88 F. Finn — On specimens of two Mauritian Birds. [No. 2, 



Collection, a Kashmir specimeD, has a bill and frontal shield of 1'6 

 inches, with the depth of bill measured in the same place, of '4 only. 

 The wing of this bird measures 6*3. 



The left shank of the Mauritius bird, measured from the upper end 

 of the tarso-metatarse to the setting-on of the front-toes, is 2*2 inches, 

 as against the 1*8 of the Kashmir bird ; but the thickness of the shank 

 across the front, midway down its length, is '2 in the former as 

 against '15 in the latter. I have not measured the shanks from front 

 to back, so as to avoid any error from the insertion of wires into the legs 

 of the Asiatic Society's specimen. The middle toe and claw of the 

 Mauritius bird only exceed those of the Kashmir specimen by 

 about '1 of an inch, so that in the insular specimen the toes have 

 decreased in relative length. Another remarkable point about the 

 Mauritius bird is that it has the frontal shield, which is very large, trun- 

 cate behind even more markedly than in the American Gallinula galeata ; 

 that is to say, judging from our two specimens of the latter, which show 

 so much variation in this character as to suggest that those authors who 

 only allow the New World birds the rank of a subspecies are correct. 

 The differences in the frontal shields will be easily be apparent from 

 the full-sized figures given in Plate V. It will be seen that the 

 Mauritius bird has as long a bill as the Lake St. Clair example of 

 G. galeata, whose wing measures 7*4 inches. 



To sum up, the present specimen of G. chloropus from Mauritius, 

 when compared with normal specimens, exhibits an increase of the size 

 of the bill and feet, and a shortening of the wings, tail, and toes, which 

 show that it has progressed some way in the direction of the flightless 

 forms of Gallinula separated in the British Museum Catalogue as Por- 

 phyriornis. In colouration it does not differ from G. chloropus ; it is 

 true that the under-tail coverts are cream-colour instead of white, but 

 this is probably due to the age of the specimen. Professor A. Newton's 

 G. pyrrhorhoa, described from Mauritius, has these ochreous under-tail- 

 coverts; but the tinge has been shown by Dr. R. B. Sharpe (Cat. 

 Birds, B.M., Vol. XIII, p. 173), to exist in English specimens, and one 

 in the Indian Museum collected by Colonel C. T. Bingham in the 

 Shan States also exhibits it. Another character given by Professor 

 Newton is the yellowness of the legs of G. pyrrhorhoa ; but from an 

 old specimen like the present one it is quite impossible now to say of 

 what colour the legs originally were. 



It seems to me, therefore, that the Moorhens of Mauritius need 

 re-examination; if they normally present the stoutness of build and 

 brevity of wing and tail characteristic of the present specimen, they 

 certainly constitute a recognizable race, which might well bear the name 



