192 KAIL. 



prodigious numbers, they are also shot on the wing, but more 

 usually taken at night in the following manner: A kind of iron 

 grate is fixed on the top of a stout pole, which is placed like a 

 mast, in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker the night 

 the more successful is the sport. The person who manages the 

 canoe is provided with a light paddle, ten or twelve feet in 

 length; and about an hour before high-water proceeds through 

 among the reeds, which lie broken and floating on the surface. 

 The whole space, for a considerable way round the canoe, is 

 completely enlightened ; the birds stare with astonishment, and 

 as they appear, are knocked on the head with the paddle, and 

 thrown into the canoe. In this manner from twenty to eighty 

 dozens have been killed by three negroes, in the short space of 

 three hours. 



At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous 

 in the lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontiers, where 

 another species of reed (of which they are equally fond) grows 

 in shallows, in great abundance. Gentlemen who have shot 

 them there, and on whose judgment I can rely, assure me, that 

 they differ in nothing from those they have usually killed on 

 the shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill; they are equally fat, 

 and exquisite eating. On the seacoast of New Jersey, where 

 these reeds are not to be found, this bird is altogether unknown; 

 though along the marshes of Maurice river, and other tributary 

 streams of the Delaware, and wherever the reeds abound, the 

 Rail are sure to be found also. Most of them leave Pennsylvania 

 before the end of October, and the southern states early in No- 

 vember; though numbers linger in the warm southern marshes 

 the whole winter. A very worthy gentleman, Mr. Harrison, 

 who lives in Kittiwan, near a creek of that name, on the borders 

 of James river, informed me, that in burning his meadows early 

 in March, they generally raise and destroy several of these 

 birds. That the great body of these Rail winter in countries 

 beyond the United States, is rendered highly probable from 

 their beinp; so frequently met with at sea, between oui ah< 

 and the West India islands. A captain Douglass informed 



