WHITE-BKOWED CRAKE. 
quills dusky brown ; “ Bill red at base, distal half olive-yeUow ; feet olive- 
yellow, the tarsus olive-green ; iris red ; eyelid red ” (J, P. Rogers). Total length, 
184 mm ; culmen, 22 ; wing, 95 ; tail, 48 ; tarsus, 33. 
Adult female. Similar to the adult male. 
Young. “ The young differ from the adult in having only an indication of the marks on 
the face, in having the crown of the head brown instead of brownish-black, and the 
sides of the neck and flanks deep buff instead of grey ” (Gould). 
Nest. “Made of rushes or coarse herbage, Uned with grass, and situated among swampy 
vegetation ” (Le Souef ) . 
Nggs. “ Vary from four to six in number : are oval or rounded in form, the shell being close 
grained, smooth and slightly lustrous. The ground-colour varies from a dull greenish- 
white to a light yellowish-clay shade, which is almost obscured by innumerable fleecy 
markings, varying from yeUowish-brown to dull chestnut-brown. As a rule the 
markings are fairly even in size and distributed over the entire surface ; in others they 
are intermingled with a few large confluent patches, while in some they are larger and 
predominate chiefly on the thicker end. Measurements in inches, 1.13 to 1.07 by .9 to 
83 ” (North). 
Breeding season. January and February (North) ; February to May (Le Souef), 
In the Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., XXIII., Sharpe included P. leucophrys Gould as a 
synonym of P. cinerea Vieillot, for which he proposed the new generic name 
PoUolimnas, and since then the Australian bird has been called Poliolimnas 
cinereus. The characters used by Sharpe for differentiating this bird generically 
are not of generic value, though this bird is rather an aberrant Porzana. As, 
however, these small Porzanae vary considerably, I have not considered the 
characters noted as sufficiently important to necessitate the retention of 
Sharpe’s monotypic genus. 
The type-locality of Vieillot’s P. cinerea is Java, and upon comparing speci- 
mens from that locality with Australian birds, I find the latter easily separable by 
the much darker coloration of the upper-side. The crown of the head in the Javan 
form is slate or bluish-grey (Sharpe called it “dark ashy-grey”), whereas the 
Australian bird has the head blackish with faint brownish tips to some of the 
feathers ; all the dark brown coloration of the Australian bird is replaced by 
very light brown in the Javan ones. The Javan birds have long secondaries, 
often exceeding the primaries in length, while in Australian specimens the 
secondaries are obviously shorter. The coloration of the under-side bf the 
Australian birds is of a darker shade throughout. As a matter of fact, I 
conclude that P. cinerea may be separable into several more subspecies, but 
the material available does not permit me to diagnose them satisfactorily. 
My collector Mr. Rogers, when stationed about twenty miles south of 
Wyndham, in the North-west of Australia, found this bird fairly common, and 
easily procured specimens. He bears out the following remarks by Gould 
* Handb. B. Austr., II., p. 343 (1865). 
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