322 VELLOW-BREASTED RAIL. 
essentially aquatic as the gallinules, or their close relatives 
the Porphyriones. hey also breed in marshes, among weeds 
and thickets, placing the nest near the water's edge, or, fasten- 
ing it to the reeds, they build a floating habitation. In most 
of the species (how it is in the present we do not know) the 
eggs are about eight, generally seven or nine in number, 
their colour being always of green, more or less tinged with 
olive, and very oval in shape. Different in this from the 
gallinules, they prefer stagnant to clear waters, and always 
keep where the grass is high, and particularly avoid sand and 
exposed shores. Notwithstanding their apparently limited 
powers of flight, and a conformation similar to that of the 
sedentary, unenterprising gallinules, they periodically under- 
take great journeys. They walk with agility and ease, raising 
their head, elevating their feet, and jerking up their tail: 
they alight sometimes on low branches, never on trees, except 
to escape a very close chase. Of a nocturnal disposition, they 
hide closely by day, seeking their food in the morning and 
evening, or by moonlight, when they emerge from their 
retreats. ‘Their food is both animal and vegetable; they 
search eagerly after worms and snails, and are no less fond 
of certain leaves and the seeds of marsh plants. 
The following description is taken from a fine male, pro- 
cured, as we have mentioned, in the neighbourhood of New 
York in the winter. 
Length, hardly six inches ; extent, about ten: bill six-eighths 
of an inch long, exceedingly compressed, of a greenish-dusky 
at base beneath on the margins of both mandibles, and the 
ridge near the front dull yellowish orange ; inides dark drab ; 
feet dirty flesh colour ; tarsus one inch; middle toe an inch 
and one-eighth long. Base of the whole plumage slate. 
Head above chocolate-brown, the feathers being slightly 
skirted with cinnamon-ferruginous, and on the hind part 
minutely dotted at tip with white ; over each eyea broad stripe 
of cinnamon-ferruginous, a chocolate spot between the bill and 
eye inconspicuously continued beyond it; the chocolate-brown 
