224 FEATHERED GAME 



"without ever having seen one before. He 

 readily named the different shorebirds which 

 were taken in the same place. 



The rails are a numerous family and one of 

 wide dispersion, there being at the proper sea- 

 son some representative in every habitable 

 quarter of the globe. The characteristics of the 

 different members of the family are everywhere 

 the same ; the bodies, thin and compressed, mak- 

 ing up for a lack of "beam" by a much greater 

 depth than usual; the legs long and very mus- 

 cular, with large feet and long toes to assist in 

 their traveling easily over the floating grasses 

 and drift stuff so plentiful in their favorite 

 haunts. Their wings are short and rounded, 

 and have nothing like the sail area of the 

 ''bay snipe." From this fact their flight is 

 widely different from the free, bold and power- 

 ful action of the plover-snipe group. Indeed it 

 is such an effort for the Eail to lift his heavy 

 body, long legs and plebeian feet clear of the 

 ground that every member of the tribe has an 

 inborn dislike of flying, and so, if pursued, he 

 runs, skulks among the grass stems, crawls into 

 the drain holes and the half-subterranean pas- 

 sages made by the muskrat and mink, and only 



