GALLINULES

    A gentle transition to the true gallinules is formed by the so-called Habroptila Axallacii from the Moluccan island Gilolo, a form with a remarkable lax plumage, and so short and weak wings, that it must be unable to fly, meeting in this respect a true gallinule from the Samoan Islands, which Hartlaub and Finsch have called Pareudiastes pacacus.  The large eyes indicate nocturnal habits, and Mr. S.J. Whitmee tells that the natives positively assured him that the  'punabe' burrows in the ground and nests in the burrow.  It was formerly more common, and is, like all birds deprived of flight, and confined to a restricted locality, doomed to an early extinction.  The gallinules proper, as represented by our so-called Florida gallinule (Gallinula galectta) and the European moor-hen (G. chlorojous) form a small group scattered all over the warmer and temperate regions of the globe. A near relative of the last-mentioned species, which lives on the lonely island Tristan d'Acunha in the South Atlantic, and has been described by Dr. Sclater as G. nesiotis is worth mentioning, since it most conclusively illustrates the effect of isolation by reducing the sternal apparatus and the power of flight, concomitant with increasing the size and the strength of the hind extremities,  In the external appearance and coloration the 'island-hen' differs only little from the moor-hen, which may be regarded as the parent stock, but the form is shorter and thicker, and the legs stouter, though the toes are not longer.  The wing, however, is shorter, and the feathers remarkably soft and inferior in size.  Still more striking are the differences in the skeleton, for in G. chlorojgus the proportion between the size of the breast-bone to that of the pelvis is as 4 1/2 to 4, while in G. nesiotis it is as 4 to 5; in other words, in the former the breast-bone is larger than the pelvis, in the latter the pelvis is larger than the breast-bone.  It is therefore easy to understand that the specimen which was brought alive to London could only "flutter a little, but obviously uses its legs and not its wings as a mode of escape from its enemies."