250 COMMUNION WITH NATURE. 



with pleasure. Sometimes the extent of these tidal 

 overflowed lands is so great, that the navigator of 

 the numerous water-courses that traverse them, or 

 the rail-shooter who poles his way over their bosom 

 at high tide, can see nothing but a wide expanse 

 of plumed reeds, transferring to the mind similar 

 impressions of boundlessness to those that strike 

 you on first viewing the great prairies of the Far 

 West. There are, I suppose, some people who care 

 not for such scenes ; who, if alone in such a 

 spot, with nought but God's untutored children 

 for companions, would sigh for the busy haunts, of 

 man and the dissipations of city life. Well, every 

 one to his taste ! but the note of the little reed- 

 warbler, the sight of the ever-changing, yet always 

 mathematical figures formed by a flight of duck, 

 the sound caused by the croaking of the bull-frog, 

 or the melancholy but sweet and appealing call of 

 the curlew, are as elevating, as purifying to my 

 mind as a stroll through a graveyard, or an hour 

 spent under the lofty roof, in the subdued light 

 of Westminster Abbey. Thoughts and impressions 

 such as these can be obtained by all whose tempera- 

 ment is similar to my own, nowhere better than in 

 the haunts of the sorra-rail. 



Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey in all 

 probability are the most celebrated places for rail- 

 shooting ; but it must not be imagined that these 

 birds are confined to these localities alone. The 

 wet prairies of Western Indiana, the sloughs of 



