over it, on such raft or float as
they may find constructed for them by water-lily or other buoyant
leaves. Of these "come and trip it as you come" chicks,--(my emendation
of Milton is surely more reasonable than the emendations of commentators
as a body, for we do not, any of us, like to see our mistresses "trip
it as they _go_")--there are, I find, pictured by Mr. Gould, three
'species,' called by him, Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake; Porzana
Pygmaea, Baillon's Crake; and Porzana Maruetta, Spotted Crake.

Now, in the first place, I find 'Porzana' to be indeed Italian for
'water-hen,' but I can't find its derivation; and in the second place,
these little birds are neither water-hens nor moor-hens, nor
water-cocks nor moor-cocks; neither can I find, either in Gould,
Yarrell, or Bewick, the slightest notice of their voices!--though it is
only in implied depreciation of their quality, that we have any
business to call them 'Crakes,' 'Croaks,' or 'Creaks.' In the third
place, 'Olivaceous' is not a translation of 'Minuta,' nor 'Baillon's'
of 'Pygmaea,' nor 'spotted' of 'Maruetta'; which last is another of the
words that mean nothing in any language that I know of, though the
French have adopted it as 'Marouette.' And in the fourth place, I can't
make out any difference, either in text or picture, between Mr.
Baillon's Crake, and the 'minute' one, except that the minute one is
the bigger, and has fewer white marks in the center of the back.

95. For our purposes, therefore, I mean to call all the three
varieties neither Crake nor Porzan, but 'Allegretta,' which will at
once remind us of their motion; the larger one, nine inches long, I
find called always Spotted Crake, so that shall be 'Allegretta
Maculata,' Spotty Allegret; and the two little ones shall be, one, the
Tiny Allegret, and the other the Starry Allegret (Allegretta Minuta,
and Allegretta Stellaris); all the three varieties being generally
thought of by the plain English name I have given at the head of this
section, 'Lily-Ouzel' (see, in Sec. 7, page 5, the explanation of my
system of dual epithet, and its limitations. I note, briefly, what may
be properly considered distinctive in the three kinds.)

II.A.

ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MACULATA. SPOTTED ALLEGRET.

96. Water-Crake or 'Skitty' of Bewick,--French, 'Poule d'eau
Marouette,' (we may perhaps take Marouette as euphonious for Maculata,
but I wish I knew what it meant);--though so light of foot, flies