A RARE BIRD

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 30

A RARE BIRD

GIFT TO A MUSEUM

THE FLIGHTLESS RAIL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, June 8.

A mounted specimen of one of the I world's rarest birds, the flightless rail, j was brought here by the Rev. A. G, Partridge, vicar of Wood Newton, Peterborough, England, and formerly his Majesty's Commissioner on the island of Tristan Da Cunha, in the South Atlantic. Mr. Partridge, who believes his specimen is the first ever brought to this country, said he would present it to the American Museum of Natural History, together • with an egg of the species and another bird, preserved in »Jcohol. Officials of fhe museum have expressed great interest in the gift, as there are few specimens of the flightless rail, known to science as the Atlantisia-Rogersi-Lowe, . and the species is now nearly extinct. - The birds have existed in the past only on the tiny desolate atoll known as' Inaccessible Island, a few miles from Tristan Da Cunha, and Mr. Part-j ridge captured twelve of them in 1931, when he was Commissioner. He lived on the island from 1929 to 1933, having gone there as vicar. To catch the birds, which die quickly in captivity, Mr. Partridge crossed the twenty miles of sea between Tristan Da Cunha and Inaccessible Island in a twenty-flve-foot canvas boat. The birds look like two-day-old black' chicks. They have slender legs, small heads, sharp yellow beaks, and soft short wings useless for flying. Science, the vicar said, is still uncertain as to the reason for the birds' inability to fly. In their native island, at the time he caught them, the birds lived in subterranean retreats ' under debris and rocks, and when surprised "ran like partridges through the long grass and ferns." They lived on insects and plant seeds. Mr. Partridge is on a vacation and brought the birds as a gift to the American Museum in recognition of the help given to the people of Tristan Da Cunha by Americans during his residence there. He said that life on the British island was simple and most of the inhabitants were contented. He called the place a "mother-in-law's paradise," because there was only one unmarried man of marriageable age, Peter Repetto, who was appointed chief 7 of Jhe island., somaj^years^agot,'