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2 
Stm—On CApTivE PALUDICOLAE. 
A Carolina Rail, it will be remembered, is scarcely more 
than eight inches in length. But when running it can set 
an astonishing pace, leaving tracks a foot apart! At such 
times the feathers are pressed close and the body is tilted up 
astern. 
While in captivity my bird fed upon small beetles and 
earth-worms. One or two large “ night-walkers” sufficed 
for a meal, but if the worms were smallish eight or ten were 
not too many. Considerable water was used inside and out. 
After a bath the wings were held in a roof-like position — 
like the wings of a Noctuid moth. In similar circumstances 
coots and gallinules expose their primaries to the sunlight in 
the same way. 
At night the Sora roosted in some dark corner on the 
floor. He stood up on both feet with his head turned around 
and tucked under the humeral feathers from above. 
A druggist in Jefferson once kept a live Coot in the store- 
window for some time. A corn-field was reproduced, for 
effect, in miniature. This bird ate all the insides out of a 
jack-o-lantern, reaching in thru the eyes and nose to do it, but 
instead of “ shinning up a corn-sta!k”’ to roost—as the owner 
declared—the coot spent his nights on the floor. His attitude 
in sleep was like that of the rail—excepting that he stood on 
one foot only. The other was quite concealed. 
To me the marsh-hirds have always had something of 
mystery about them. They seem to have been handed down 
to us from an earlier epoch and undergone little change. 
The robins, wrens, and other familiar birds quite likely looked 
on with approval when our hairy, low-browed ancestors gave 
up their arboreal habits and took to the ground; but the rails 
and mud-hens, or birds not far different, must have skulked 
in the shadows of huge amphibious animals in times when 
there were no men. There is something peculiar in the quiz- 
zical, half sinister glance of a rail-bird. One feels that this 
little dark eye had vague memories of sights which would 
make a man’s blood run cold. It is at once alluring and for- 
bidding. We are never taken fully into the confidence of a 
