

188 KAIL. 



passage to or from the countries where they are regularly found 

 at different seasons of the year; and this for the very same rea- 

 sons, that they are so rarely seen even in the places where they 

 inhabit. 



It is not, therefore, at all surprising, that the regular migra- 

 tions of the American Rail or Sora should, in like manner, have 

 escaped notice in a country like this, whose population bears so 

 small a proportion to its extent; and where the study of natural 

 history is so little attended to. But that these migrations do 

 actually take place, from north to south, and vice versa, may be 

 fairly inferred from the common practice of thousands of other 

 species of bird* less solicitious of concealment, and also from 

 the following facts. 



On the twenty-second day of February I killed two of these 

 birds in the neighbourhood of Savannah in Georgia, where they 

 have never been observed during the summer. On the second 

 of the May following, I shot another in a watery thicket below 

 Philadelphia, between the rivers Schuylkill and Delaware, in 

 what is usually called the Neck. This last was a male, in full 

 plumage. We are also informed, that they arrive at Hudson's 

 Bay early in June, and again leave that settlement for the south 

 early in autumn. That many of them also remain here to breed 

 is proved by the testimony of persons of credit and intelli- 

 gence with whom I have conversed, both here and on James 

 river in Virginia, who have seen their nests, eggs and young. 

 In the extensive meadows that border the Schuylkill and De- 

 laware, it was formerly common, before the country was so 

 thickly settled there, to find young Rail in the first mowing 

 time, among the grass. Mr. James Bartram, brother to the bo- 

 tanist, a venerable and still active man of eighty-three, and well 

 acquainted with this bird, says, that he has often seen and caught 

 young Rail in his own meadows in the month of June; he has 

 also seen their nest, which he says is usually in a tussock of 

 grass, is formed of a little dry grass, and has four or five e 

 of a dirty whitish colour, with brown or blackish spots; the young 

 run off as soon as they break the shell, are then quite black, and 



