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 



