PURPLE GA LLINULE. 131 
individuals by the officers of the Boston frigate, which they had caught on 
board. My friend John Bachman once received three specimens that had 
been caught three hundred miles from land, one of them having come 
through the cabin window. He also obtained from the Hon. Mr. Poinset 
a fine specimen caught on board, on the Santee river, in South Carolina, in 
May. It is easily kept alive if fed with bread soaked in milk ; and on this 
food I have known several that remained in good health for years. In 
Louisiana, where it is called Rale Bleu , its flesh is not held in much estima- 
tion, but is used by the negroes for making gombo. 
My friend Bachman considers this species as rather scarce in South 
Carolina and Georgia, but states that it breeds there, as he has occasionally 
observed pairs on the head waters or preserves of rice plantations during 
summer, but never met with any in winter. The extreme limit of its range 
eastward is the neighbourhood of Boston, where a few individuals have been 
procured. 
Purple Gallinule, Gallinula Porphyrio, Wib. Amer. Orn., vol. ix. p. 67. 
Gallinula martinica, Bonap. Syn., p. 336. 
Purple Gallinule, Nutt. Man., vol. ii. p. 221. 
Purple Gallinule, Gallinula martinica , Aud. Orn. Biog., vol. iv. p. 37. 
Male, 134, 214. 
Breeds and resides from Texas to South Carolina. Stragglers are seen as 
far as Massachusetts. Up the Mississippi to Memphis. Bather common in 
Louisiana and Florida. 
Frontal plate blue ; bill carmine, tipped with yellow ; head, fore part of 
neck, and breast, purplish-blue ; abdomen and tibial feathers dusky ; sides 
and lower wing-coverts green ; lower tail-coverts white ; upper parts oliva- 
ceous-green ; sides of neck, and outer part of wings, greenish-blue. 
Weight of one individual 74 oz., of another 84, both males ; of a fourth 7 
oz. ; of a fifth 54 ; and of a sixth only 44. 
The female is somewhat smaller, but similar to the male, the frontal plate 
is less extended, and the tints of the plumage a little less vivid. 
The young are at first covered with black down. When fledged they are 
olivaceous on the upper parts, dull purple beneath ; the bill dull green. 
After the first moult, the bill is light carmine, greenish yellow at the end, 
the head dark purple ; the plumage coloured as above described, but less 
brilliant, the tarsi and toes greenish-yellow. 
In a male bird the tongue is 10 twelfths of an inch long, sagittate at the 
base, with conical papillm, of which the outer are larger, slightly concave 
above, horny towards the end, which is thin, rather obtuse, and lacerated. 
On the middle line of the roof of the mouth anteriorly is a row of large 
