l the Fringe-foot a Phalarope, you ought in
consistency to call the Green-foot a Chlorope. Their feet are not only
notable for greenness, but for size: they are very ugly, having the
awkward and ill-used look of the feet of Scratchers, while a trace of
beginning membrane connects them with the fringe-foots.

Their proper name would be Marsh-cock, which would enough distinguish
them from the true Moor-cock or Black-cock. 'Moat-cock' would be
prettier, and characteristic; for in the old English days they used to
live much in the moats of manor-houses; mine is the name nearest to the
familiar one; only note there is no proper feminine of 'pullus,' and I
use the adjective 'pulla' to express the dark color.

It is a dark-_brown_ bird, according to the colored pictures--iron
_gray_, Buffon says, with white stripes of little order on the bodice,
clumsy feet and bill, but makes up for all ungainliness by its gentle
and intelligent mind; and seems meant for a useful possession to
mankind all over the world, for it lives in Siberia and New Zealand; in
Senegal and Jamaica; in Scotland, Switzerland, and Prussia; in Corfu,
Crete, and Trebizond; in Canada, and at the Cape. I find no account of
its migrations, and one would think that a bird which usually flies
"dip, dip, dipping with its toes, and leaving a track along the water
like that of a stone at 'ducks and drakes'" (Yarrell), would not
willingly adventure itself on the Atlantic. It must have a kind of
human facility in adapting itself to climate, as it has human
domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity and sympathies
in taste. A family of them, petted by a clergyman's wife, were
constantly adding materials to their nest, and "made real havoc in the
flower-garden,--for though straw and leaves are their chief ingredients,
they seem to have an eye for beauty, and the old hen has been seen
surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones." Thus Bishop
Stanley, whose account of the bird is full of interesting particulars.
This aesthetic water-hen, with her husband, lived at Cheadle, in
Staffordshire, in the rectory moat, for several seasons, "always
however leaving it in the spring," (for Scotland, supposably?): being
constantly fed, the pair became quite tame, built their nest in a
thorn-bush covered with ivy which had fallen into the water; and "when
the young are a few days old, the old ones bring them up close to the
drawing-room window, where they are re