RALLIDM5 — THE GALLINULES — GALLINULA. 
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white. Stripes on the flanks less distinct or nearly obsolete. Downy young : Glossy black, the 
medial lower parts fuliginous ; throat and cheeks interspersed with silvery white hairs ; bill 
yellowish (red in life ?) crossed about the middle by a dusky bar. 
Total length, about 12.00 to 13.00 inches ; extent, 20.00 to 21.00 ; wing, 6.85-7.25 ; culmen 
(to end of frontal shield) 1.70-1.85 ; tarsus, 2.10-2.30; middle toe, 2.50-2.60. 
This species much resembles the Moor-hen, Water-hen, or Gallinule of Europe ( G . cliloropus), 
but is larger, has the frontal shield truncated instead of pointed posteriorly, and is otherwise different. 
It likewise resembles other exotic species, particularly G. Garmani of the Peruvian Andes, but is 
quite distinct. Specimens vary a great deal in the size and shape of the frontal shield, and in the 
amount of white on the abdomen. These variations are by no means dependent on locality, how- 
ever, but upon the individual, having doubtless some connection with age and season, the white on 
the abdomen being more marked on winter specimens. 
The habits and the distribution of this species, more especially the latter, have 
been very imperfectly known, and very incorrectly given. Wilson appears to have 
been unaware of its existence. Audubon regarded it as identical with the European 
Moor-hen, and as an exclusively southern species — a few migrating to Carolina on 
the east — and thought that those found on the fresh waters of the middle districts 
were only stragglers. It was said not to ascend the Mississippi above Natchez, and 
not to be seen in the western country. Nutt all, while recognizing its distinctness as 
a species from G. cliloropus of Europe, calls it the Florida Gallinule — a name calcu- 
lated to perpetuate the wrong impression existing as to its distribution — and speaks 
of it as “unknown in Canada.” Even Mr. Cassin, in the ninth volume of the “Pacific 
Railroad Reports,” assigns to it a habitat exclusively southern, and considers it 
as only accidental in the Middle and Northern States — making no mention of its 
abundant presence both in the Northwestern States and on the coast of California. 
Instead of being known as the Florida Gallinule, it deserves the more comprehensive 
title of American Gallinule. It is abundant in South America from Panama to the 
region of the La Plata, in the West India Islands, in Central America, in the Southern 
Gulf States from South Carolina to the Mississippi, and probably to Mexico, on the 
California coast, and in the region of the Great Lakes, both on the American and 
the Canadian shores. 
Professor Newton found it a common and resident species in St. Croix. While it 
closely resembles the European cliloropus in its appearance, and while the habits of 
the two birds appear to be identically the same, their eggs even being undistinguish- 
able from each other, the notes of the two birds are very different. This Gallinule 
breeds in St. Croix in April, and also in Cuba, where it is abundant. Mr. March 
