THE COMMON GALLINULE. 137 



with the bill of a dingy greenish colour, as are the feet, the claws yellowish- 

 brown. 



On comparing together a great number of European and American speci- 

 mens, 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 different, 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, making 

 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 detected him 

 in the act), they formed their 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 conceal themselves in an overgrown 

 rock-work, subsisting on minced flesh mixed with bread or potatoes, pur- 

 posely laid down for them, and on which I have often watched them feasting 

 when the snow was lying deep." 



