THE KING RAIL 223 
with us and the slayer of plover and baybirds 
had a treat of which they still speak longingly. 
There were literally thousands of them. Every 
field of ordinary size had its flock or its gunner 
lurking in the shadow of a rock or hidden in a 
clump of weeds with a bunch of decoys before 
him, intent on breaking all former records of 
slaughter. The thoughts of the juicy ‘‘feeds’’ 
of those days make my mouth water yet. 
THE KING RAIL. 
(Rallus elegans.) 
Just what percentage of the population of 
our marshes is made up of the rail family it is 
difficult to say, but it is surely a large propor- 
tion. They are constantly changing residence 
and there is a large ‘‘floating population’’ hav- 
ing no fixed abode. Often rails are numerous 
in localities where their human neighbors never 
suspect their presence. I once showed the con- 
tents of my game bag to a man who lived on 
the edge of my favorite marsh; in it were a 
number of rails and he was curious to know 
what they were, saying that he had lived there 
all his life (where I had shot hundreds of them) 
