116 RALLUS CAROLINUS. 



floating reeds, as also the backwardness of the game to 

 spring as the tide decreases, oblige them to return. 

 Several boats are sometimes within a short distance of 

 each other, and a perpetual cracking of musketry 

 prevails along the whole reedy shores of tin? river. In 

 these excursions it is not uncommon for an active and 

 expert marksman to kill ten or twelve dozen in a tide. 

 They are usually shot singly, though I have known five 

 killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled piece. 

 These instances, however, are rare. 



The flight of these birds among the reeds is usually 

 low; and, shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to 

 more than fifty or one hundred yards. When winged 

 and uninjured in their legs, they swim and dive with 

 great rapidity, and are seldom seen to rise again. I 

 have several times, on such occasions, discovered them 

 clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, 

 and at other times skulking under the floating reeds, 

 with their bill just above the surface. Sometimes, 

 when wounded, they dive, and, rising under the gun wale 

 of the boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as 

 the boat moves, until they have an opportunity of 

 escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and delicate in 

 every thing but the legs, which seem to possess great 

 vigour and energy, and their bodies being so remarkably 

 thin, or compressed, as to be less than an inch and a 

 quarter through transversely, they are enabled t<> 

 between the reeds like rats. When seen, they are almost 

 o > i istantly jetting up the tail. Yet, though their flight 

 among the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, every 

 sportsman who is acquainted with them here must have 

 seen them occasionally rising to a considerable height, 

 stretching out their legs behind them, and flying rapidly 

 across the river vt hnv it is more than a mile in width. 



Such is the mode of rail shooting in the neighbour- 

 hood of Philadelphia. In Virginia, particularly along 

 the shores of James River within the tide water, where 

 the rail, or sora, are in prodigious numbers, they are 

 ..i.NM shot on the wing, but more usually taken at ni^ht 

 in the following manner : A kind of iron gra; 



