[112] Ann. and Mag. of N.H., Jan. 1846. Robinson states that the Aramus feeds upon snakes, toads, and lizards, as well as wood-snails, and gully-crabs, yet not on his own observation, but on the authority of “people of credit, who have seen junks of undigested snakes and lizards taken out of their craws.” This is not confirmed, however, by my own observation, gasteropod mollusca having been found in every specimen I have examined. Mr. Hill’s observation does not confirm the former statement. Of one which was sent to him in July 1842, he remarks, “Having opened the craw for the purpose of ascertaining the food it had been eating, I found nothing but a quantity of a dark pulverulent substance, very much resembling decayed wood; a substance which a bird with such a bill as the Clucking-hen has, might be supposed to pick up with the worms it might find in the decaying wood. There was no trace of any animal body, neither wings of beetles, nor vertebræ of lizards.” It may be added that this specimen when discovered, “flew from where a limb of rotten log-wood had been broken off; perhaps it was eating some of the large wood-worms.” Mr. Eyton’s bird was sent from Honduras: if it had been a Jamaican specimen, I should have guessed that the zoophyte which seemed to resemble a sea-anemone, was a large species of _Vaginulus_ common in the mountains. From the general, though not total, absence of the shells of the snails which I have found, I judge that the shell is crushed with the beak, and shaken off before the snail is swallowed. The opercula, which are frequently found attached, have enabled me to recognise the genera _Ampullaria_, _Cyclostoma_, and _Helicina_; the latter two, terrestrial snails. The piercing cries with which the Clucking-hen salutes the approach of night, are little heard at any other time: during the day it more commonly emits the deliberate clucking above mentioned, as it saunters hither and thither in the mountain-woods, or among the cocoes of the provision-grounds. We sometimes hear the harsh sounds proceeding from the forest, even after night has established its dominion, and hence, probably, it has been considered a nocturnal bird; I suspect, however, that these cries are not the accompaniments of activity, but the harbingers of repose, emitted while sitting on the roosting tree, or while flying to and fro in preparation for alighting; the cries which are heard at a rather later hour marking, probably, the awaking from the first sleep, as they soon relapse into silence.