tTPLAND SHOOTING. 



287 



RAIL SHOOTING. 



ROM the mitldle of August, until 

 the setting in of winti-y frosts, 

 the pursuit of this cuiious, and ex- 

 cellent little bird, may be followed. 

 m the localities which he fre- 

 (juents, by those who care for the 

 sport. 

 \ It is not by any means compa- 



' f"*^ rable to those kinds of shooting, 

 which are followed with dogs in the field, among varied scenery 

 and diverse accidents of sport; nor is the bird very sporting in 

 its habits, nor is much skill required to shoot him. 



He is, however, delicious to eat ; lie literally abounds on the 

 reedy mud-flats of those rivers which he affects ; and his season 

 is one at which there is little or no other occupation for the 

 sportsman. So that, between the epicurean desire for his llesh, 

 the absence of more agreeable and exciting sport, and the very 

 easiness of the pursuit, which, to young hands and bad sliots, is 

 a recommendation, the Rail is very eagerly pursued ; and dur- 

 ing those periods of the tide, which pemiit his pursuit, a stran- 

 ger might well believe, during the Rail season, almost anywhere 

 on the Delaware, sixty miles below, or thirty above Philadel- 

 phia, that the outposts of two armies were engaged in a brisk 

 skirmish, so incessant is the rattle of small arms. 



It is the habit of this little bird to skulk and run among the 

 reeds and water-oats of the flats which he inhabits; and, owing 

 to the peculiar form of his long, flat-sided, wedge-like body, 

 with the legs situated far behind, and the wings closely com- 



