106 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
brown, but in its habits, as it never frequents watery places 
but is always found in grass, corn or furze. With us it is a 
bird of passage, and on its first arrival about April, is very 
lean, not weighing more than six ounces ; but before its 
departure it weighs more than eight. The flesh is good food. 
The common Gallinule or Water-hen weighs fifteen 
ounces. Its bill is red, and covered at the base with a red 
membrane. The plumage above is sooty black, beneath 
ash-coloured. As the birds of the crane kind are furnished 
with long wings, and easily change place, the water-hen, 
whose w'ings are short, is obliged to reside entirely near 
those places where her food lies : she never leaves the side 
of the pond or the river in which she seeks for provision. 
She builds her nest upon low trees and shrubs, of sticks 
and fibres, by the water side. She lays twice or thrice in a 
summer. Her young ones swim (he moment they leave the 
egg? pursue the parent, anti imitate all her manners. She 
rears, in this manner, two or three broods in a season : and 
when the young are grown up, she drives them off, to shift 
for themselves. 
The spotted Gallinule is a less common bird : and in 
Russia and some other parts of Europe a species is found, 
which from its colour is called the purple Gallinule , which' 
is the size of a common fowl. 
Of the foreign birds of this order, it is proper to men- 
tion the Jabiru of India and of Brazil. Of these great 
birds we know but little, except the general outline of their 
figure and the enormous bills which we often see preserved 
in the cabinets of the curious. The bill of the latter is red, 
and thirteen inches long : the bill of the former is of a dusky 
colour. Neither of them, however, are of a size propor- 
tioned to their immoderate length of bill. The jabiru of 
Brazil is in length about six feet. They are both covered 
with white feathers, except the head and neck, that are 
naked : and their princmal difference is in the size of the 
body and the make of the bill ; the lower chap of the 
jabiru of Brazil being broad, and bending upwards. 
A bird still more extraordinary is included in this ordei, 
called the Anhima or Screamer, and like the former, a 
native of Brazil, This is a water-fowl of the rapacious 
kind, and bigger than a swan. r Ihe head, which is small 
for the size of the body, bears a black bill, which is not 
above two inches long; but what distinguishes it in parti- 
cular is a horn growing from the forehead as long as the 
