110 RALLUS CABOLINCS. 



BUBGENUS II CMEJf, ILL1GER. 



238. ZALLUS CAROL1NUS, LINNJGUS AMD WILSOX. 



C A HOI. IMA KAIL. 

 WILSON, PLATE XLVIIl. Flfl. I. XDIHBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 



OF all our land or water fowl, perhaps none afford 

 the sportsman more agreeable amusement, or a more 

 delicious repast, than the little bird now before M-*. 

 This amusement is indeed temporary, lasting only tut) 

 or three hours in the day for four or five weeks in each 

 year ; but, as it occurs in the most agreeable ami 

 temperate of our seasons, is attended with little or no 

 fatigue to the gunner, and is frequently successful, it 

 attracts numerous followers, and is pursued, in such 

 places as the birds frequent, with great eagerness and 

 enthusiasm. 



The natural history of the rail, or, as it is called in 

 Virginia, the sora, and in South Carolina the coot, is 

 to the most of our sportsmen involved in profound and 

 inexplicable mystery. It comes, they know not whence ; 

 and goes, they know not where. No one can detect 

 their first moment of arrival ; yet all at once the reedy 

 shores, and grassy marshes, of our large rivers swarm 

 with them, thousands being sometimes found within 

 the space of a few acres. These, when they do venture 

 on wing, seem to fly so feebly, and in such short 

 fluttering flights among the reeds, as to render it highly 

 improbable to most people that they could possibly 

 make their way over an extensive tract of country. 

 Yet, on the first smart frost that occurs, the whole 

 suddenly disappear, as if they had never been. 



To account for these extraordinary phenomena, it has 

 been supposed by some that they bury themselves in 

 the mud; but as this is every year dug into by ditchers 

 and people employed in repairing the banks, without 

 any of those sleepers being found, where but a few 

 weeks before these birds were innumerable, this theory 

 has been generally abandoned. And here their researches 

 into this mysterious matter generally end in the common 



