RAIL SHOOTING. 131 



ing with their young late in the summer, when 

 on a calm, clear night, their cry may be dis- 

 tinctly heard in the air, as they pass over the 

 city to the marshes. Dennis Welsh, who for 

 many years has occupied the situation of a 

 watchman in one of the lower districts, and is 

 well known to the sporting world as the oldest 

 and perhaps the best pusher on the river, has 

 informed us that, year after year, he has never 

 failed to distinguish their voices sounding over 

 his head, while he was silently traversing his 

 beat at the dead hour of night. As these little 

 visitors have long been a source of pleasure and 

 profit to Dennis, who still prides himself on 

 never having missed a tide, when there was 

 water enough on the marsh to work his batteau, 

 there is something curious in the idea of the 

 veteran pusher mutely listening, night after 

 night, on his rounds for the decisive evidences 

 of their arrival, as if while fulfilling his functions 

 as guardian of the public rest, he was also, in 

 some sense, acting as watchman to his own 

 private interests in the fields of air. Others, 

 while fishing for eels at night on the outer edge 

 of the flats, have repeatedly been startled by 

 hearing rail alight singly in the water close to 

 them, and instantly swim in among the reeds. 



