The relationships of Porzana ]!aviventer

A lack of agreement as to the generic characters of rails has resulted in many genera that are either poorly defined, monotypic, or composed of groups of unrelated species. Seldom has any taxonomic treatment of this family resulted in what I believe to be natural groupings. Decisions here are rendered difficult because of the general homogeneity of rails. Recently, progress was made when Benson and Winterbottom (1968) drew attention to the similarity of the South AmericanP orzana albicollist o Crecopsise gregiao f Africa, and suggested that the two species be considered congeneric. They chose to remove albicollis from Porzana and place it in Crecopsisr, ather than mergingt he two genera. Wolters (1969) points out that Mustelirallus Bonaparte antedates Crecopsis Sharpe and should be used if albicollis is included with egregia

??, The Auk: Vol. 87, 805-808