Order RALLIFORMES. 



Family RALLIDiE or RAILS. 



The Rails, although an extensive and moderately well-deter- 

 mined group, have exercised the utmost ingenuity of systematists 

 and anatomists in associating them with allied groups. The 

 result has varied with the relative importance of each character 

 employed. Some authorities raise them to the rank of an Order, 

 allied to the Hemipodes, the Cranes, and the Bustards ; others 

 remove them from the Cranes, and place them with the Stone 

 Curlews, the Game Birds, and the Cuckoos ; others yet again 

 ally them most closely with the Cranes. Their sternum contains 

 only one notch on each side of the posterior margin. In the 

 modification of their cranial bones they are schizognathous ; 

 nasals holorhinal. In their pterylosis, myology, and digestive 

 organs they are probably most closely related to the Cranes and 

 Bustards. 



The external characteristics of the Rails are their long 

 slender feet, slightly elevated hind toe, short tarsus, and com- 

 paratively short, thick beak. Primaries ten in number ; wings 

 rounded ; rectrices twelve in number, and short. Moult variable ; 

 in some species only once in autumn, in others in spring and 

 autumn. In the single-moulted species, nuptial plumage assumed 

 by abrasion and increased brilliancy. Young hatched covered 

 with down, and able to run and swim soon after they leave the 

 shell. 



Number nearly 200 species. Cosmopolitan, except in the 

 Arctic regions. 



The Rallidse is divisible into two fairly well-defined sub- 

 families, viz. : the Rallinse, of which the Rails are typical, and 

 the Gallinulinge, of which the Gallinules or Waterhens, Coots, 

 etc., are typical. Both subfamilies are represented in the British 

 Islands; 



