CLAPPER RAIL. 1 85 



esteemed for food, being frequently collected by the neigh- 

 boring inhabitants; and so abundant are the nests in the 

 marshes of New Jersey that a single person, accustomed to 

 the search, has been kno\vn to collect a hundred dozen in the 

 course of a day. Like other gregarious and inoffensive birds, 

 they have numerous enemies besides man ; and the crow, fox, 

 and minx come in for their share, not only of the eggs and 

 young, but also devour the old birds besides. From the 

 pounce of the Hawk they can more readily defend themselves 

 by dodging and threading their invisible paths through the 

 sedge. The nature of the ground they select for their nurse- 

 ries and its proximity to the sea, renders their thronging com- 

 munity liable also to accidents of a more extensively fatal 

 kind; and sometimes after the prevalence of an eastwardly 

 storm, not uncommon in the early part of June, the marshes 

 become inundated by the access of the sea, and great numbers 

 of the Rails perish, — at least, the females, now sitting, are so 

 devoted to their eggs as to remain on the nest and drown 

 rather than desert it. At such times the males, escaping from 

 the deluge, and such of their mates as have not yet begun to 

 sit, are seen by hundreds walking about, exposed and bewil- 

 dered, while the shores for a great extent are strewed with the 

 dead bodies of the luckless females. The survivors, however, 

 wasting no time in fruitless regret, soon commence to nest 

 anew ; and sometimes when their nurseries have been a second 

 time destroyed by the sea, in a short time after, so strong is 

 the instinct and vigor of the species that the nests seem as 

 numerous in the marshes as though nothing destructive had 

 ever happened. 



The young of the Clapper Rail are clad, at first, in the same 

 black down as those of the Virginian species, and are only dis- 

 tinguishable by their superior size, by having a spot of white 

 on their auriculars, and a line of the same color along the side 

 of the breast, belly, and fore part of the thigh. They run very 

 nimbly through the grass and reeds, so as to be taken with 

 considerable difficulty, and are thus, at this early period, hke 

 their parents, without the aid of their wings, capable of elud- 



