,
go necessarily among Ducks, and cannot be classed with Dabblers; though
it must be always as distinctly kept in mind that a duck _proper_ has a
flat beak, and a fully webbed foot.

Again, he may recollect that with these leaf-footed ducks of the calm
and fresh waters, must be associated the leaf-footed or fringe-footed
ducks of the sea;--'phalaropes,' which by their short wings connect
themselves with many clumsy marine creatures, on their way to become
seals instead of birds; and that I have kept the two little Titanias
out of this class, not merely for their niceness, but because they are
not short-winged in any vulgar degree, but seem to have wings about as
long as a sandpiper's;--and indeed I had put the purple sandpiper,
Arquatella maritima, with them, in my own folio; only as the
Arquatella's feet are not chestnutty, she had better go with her own
kind in our notes on them.

117. But there are yet two birds, which I think well to put with our
eight dabchicks, though they are much larger than any of them,--partly
because of their disposition, and partly because of their plumage,--the
water-rail, and water-hen. Modern science, with instinctive horror of
all that is pretty to see, or easy to remember, entirely rejects the
plumage, as any element or noticeable condition of bird-kinds; nor have
I ever yet tried to make it one myself; yet there are certain qualities
of downiness in ducks, fluffiness in owls, spottiness in thrushes,
patchiness in pies, bronzed or rusty luster in cocks, and pearly
iridescence in doves, which I believe may be aptly brought into
connection with other defining characters; and when we find an entirely
similar disposition of plumage, and nearly the same form, in two birds,
I do not think that _mere_ difference in size should far separate them.

Bewick, accordingly, calls the water-rail the 'Brook-ouzel,' and puts
it between the little crake and the water-ouzel; but he does not say a
word of its living by brooks,--only 'in low wet places.' Buffon,
however, takes it with the land-rail; Gould and Yarrell put it between
the little crake and water-hen. Gould's description of it is by no
means clear to me:--he first says it is, in action, as much "like a rat
as a bird;" then that it "bounds like a ball," (before the nose of the
spaniel); and lastly, in the next sentence, speaks of it as "this
_lath_-like bird"! It is as large as a bantam, but can run, like the
Allegretta, on floating leaves; it