PLATE XIII. 



GENUS PORPHYRIO (Brisson). 



TO this group belong the very largest of the Rallidse, and also the most brilliantly-plumaged birds, 

 their prevailing colors being blue, or greenish blue, mixed with black. They are nearly allied to 

 extinct Notomes of New Zealand. 



PORPHYRIO MELANOTICS 



BLACK-BACKED PORPHYRIO. Genus : Porphyria 



rilHIS is a large, long-legged bird, with a horizontal pose and strong massive beak. It is found very 

 J- generally distributed over the north, eastern, and southern colonies, and is especially plentiful 

 wherever situations suitable to its habits occur, such as marshes, shallow lagoons, and the sides of rivers. 

 If size is any criterion of beauty, then the temperate latitudes are more suitable to the Black-tailed 

 Porphyrio than the tropics, or the cold regions of Tasmania, for in both these places the birds are smaller 

 than in New South Wales and South Australia. 



In Tasmania where its habits have been best observed, the bird sallies forth morning and evening 

 in search of such food as snails, insects, grain, and various vegetable substances. Like the Tribonyx, it runs 

 rapidly, and makes use of this power to escape intrusion, gaining the thickest covert, and threading it with 

 marvellous quickness much after the fashion of the European Moorhen, whose flight is similar, and like this 

 bird it resorts to this mode of progression only when hard pressed. 



The Porphyrio soon becomes domesticated, and readily adopts a circumscribed home. Dr. Bennett, 

 of Sydney, knew of one domesticated in a poultry yard, which had the habit of roosting on sheds, and was 

 very fond of perching in some parrot cages. He noticed that it always seized maize or any other vegetable 

 it intended eating in the palm of the foot, holding it so until it was devoured ; the owner of this bird 

 corroborated the fact. 



The egg has the ground color, light brownish buff, but sometimes of a sagy green tinge, niediumly 

 marked with irregular sized spots and blotches of reddish brown or sienna, and greyish purple, also minutely 

 freckled with the same colours. The surface of some of the shells is somewhat lustrous, that of others is 

 not; the size varies considerably, the average being about 2 inches by 1^ inches. 



The sexes are alike in colour, but the female is somewhat smaller than the male ; in the young the 

 naked space on the crown is less developed and bright. 



Face, back of the head, centre of abdomen and thighs, sooty black ; back of the neck, breast, and 

 flanks rich deep indigo blue ; back wings and tail, shining black ; the primaries having a wash of indigo-blue 

 on their outer webs ; under tail coverts, pure white ; irides bright, orange-red ; frontal plate, bill, legs, and 

 feet, red. 



Habitats : Port Darwin and Port Essington, Gulf of Carpentaria, Rockingham Bay, Port Denison, 

 Wide Bay District, Richmond and Clarence Rivers District, New South Wales, Interior, Victoria and South 

 Australia, Tasmania. 



