CAROLINA RAIL. 113 



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 birds less solicitous of concealment, 

 and also from the following- facts. 



On the 22d 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 2d 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 proven by the testimony of persons of 

 credit and intelligence 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 Delaware 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 botanist, 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 eggs of a dirty whitish colour, 

 with brown or blackish spots j the young run off as soon 

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

 about among the grass like mice. The old ones he has 

 very rarely observed at that time, but the young often. 

 Almost every old settler along these meadows with 

 whom I have conversed, has occasionally seen young 

 rail in mowing time ; and all agree in describing them 

 as covered with blackish down. There can, therefore, 



VOL. III. H 



