JMBMrt* 
YELLOW-BREASTED RAIL. 141 
food in the morning and evening, or by moonlight, when they 
emerge from their retreats. Their food is both animal and 
vegetable; they search eagerly after worms and snails, and are no 
less fond of certain leaves, and the seeds of marsh plants. 
The following description is taken from a fine male, procured, 
as we have mentioned, in the neighbourhood of New York in the 
winter. 
Length hardly six inches, extent about ten: bill six-eighths of 
an inch long, exceedingly compressed, of a greenish-dusky, at 
base beneath on the margins of both mandibles, and the ridge 
near the front, dull yellowish-orange; irides dark drab: feet 
dirty flesh-colour; tarsus one inch; middle toe an inch and 
one-eighth long. Base of the whole plumage slate. Head above 
chocolate-brown, the feathers being slightly skirted with cinna¬ 
mon-ferruginous, and on the hind part minutely dotted at tip 
with white; over each eye a broad stripe of cinnamon-ferruginous, 
a chocolate spot between the bill and eye inconspicuously conti¬ 
nued beyond it, the chocolate-brown colour descends from the 
nucha to the back on the upper part of the neck in a broad stripe, 
the feathers of which are widely skirted with cinnamon-ferruginous, 
and crossed by two narrow white bands, one of which is terminal; 
those nearer to the neck, and the feathers of the rump having 
only the terminal band; sides of the neck and whole under 
surface yellowish-ferruginous, each feather being tipped with 
darker ferruginous, which gives a waved appearance to those 
parts, the waves being more intense on the lateral parts : throat 
and belly whitish, but passing insensibly into the general colour; 
flanks and thighs darker, with the two white transverse lines, as 
on the back. Wings when closed reaching to the tip of the tail; 
upper wing-coverts dark slate broadly margined with olive-ferru¬ 
ginous, and each with two white narrow spots representing the 
usual lines; margin and spots becoming by degrees inconspicuous 
VOL. iv.—N n 
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