ALECTORIDES: CRANES, RAILS, AND THEIR ALLIES. 
665 
a mere platform of dead rushes. Eggs 3-5, elliptical, about 1.92 X 1-22, white, with faintest 
tinge of bluish. 
IX. Order ALECTORIDES: Cranes, Rails, and their Allies. 
A portion of these birds, representing the Crane type, have a general resemblance to the 
foregoing, but are readily distinguished by the technical characters given beyond under the head 
of Gruidce, and in essential respects accord with the rest, representing the Rail type. The latter 
are birds of medium and small size, with compressed body, and the head feathered. The neck 
and legs are not particularly lengthened, but as a rule the toes are remarkably long, enabling 
the birds to run lightly over the soft oozy ground and floating vegetation of the reedy swamps 
and marshes they inhabit. This length of the toes has given a name, Macrodactijli, to the 
group ; their shy retiring habit of skulking among the rushes has caused them to be sometimes 
cRlled Laiitores (skulkers). Their nature is prsecocial ; the eggs are numerous, usually laid 
on the ground, in a rude nest. The nourishment is essentially the same as that of the Limicolcc, 
but it is simply picked up from the surface, not felt for in the mud, nor stamped out of the 
ground. The hallux is usually lengthened, and but little elevated, but may be short and well 
up, or even absent. The feet are conspicuously lobate in some forms, but never extensively 
palmate ; the phalanges of the front toes diminish in length from first to penultimate. The 
lower part of the crus is bare of feathers. The wings are usually short, rounded, and concave ; 
the tail is very short, few-feathered, often held cocked up, and wagged in time with a bobbing 
^notion of the head that occurs with each step taken. 
The Alectorides are schizognathous in palatal structure. The nasal bones are schizorhinal 
in the Crane type, holorhinal in that of the Rails. The angle of the mandible is truncate. The 
maxillo- palatines are not spongy, but thin and laminate. There are normally no basipterygoid 
processes. The sternum is typically long and narrow, and may be entire, or deeply notched; 
it is sometimes excavated to receive folds of the windpipe. There are two carotids ; and two 
intestinal coeca are present. While the general pterylosis is not peculiar, the Alectorides nor- 
mally lack the powder-down tracts so characteristic of Herons and their allies. As to the 
class ificatory muscles of the thigh, all five are present nearly throughout the order ; exception- 
ally the femoro-caudal or its accessory is wanting. 
These normally prsecocial and ptilopsedic (with whatever exceptions) birds are more sharply 
distinguished from the perfectly altricial Herodiones than they are from the completely praecocial 
and ptilopsedic Limicolce ; with which latter, in fact, the Alectorides are directly connected 
through the Bustards (Otididce) and the Thick-knees {(Edicnemidce) — the line between the 
two orders being probably to be drawn between these two families. 
This country affords typical representatives of the two leading forms of the order, that of 
the Cranes, to which Aramus belongs, and of the Rails, Coots, and Gallinules, as given beyond. 
There are, however, a number of remarkable outliers that may be briefly mentioned, as fol- 
lows : The large and important Old World family of the Bustards, Otididce, has already been 
mentioned as the connecting link between Alectorides and Limicolce. The Kagu, Rhinochostiis 
jiibatus of New Caledonia, and the Carle, Eurypyga helias of Guiana, each the type and single 
representative of a family, are near the Cranes in principal osteological characters, although 
pterylographically they are more like Herons, both possessing powder-down tracts ; and Eury- 
pyga, in particular, resembles Herons in other respects. More closely allied to the Cranes are 
the Trumpeters, Psophiidce, of one genus and few, species of South America; with the Cariamas, 
Cariamidce, of the same country, represented only by the Cariama cristata and the Chunga 
burmeisteri. The Horned Screamers, Palamedeidce, of South America, consisting of three 
species, Palamedea cornuta, Cliauna chavaria, and C. derhiana, seem to be nearer the Rails, and 
also to closely approach some water birds ; one of them is by some considered the nearest living 
