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 Rail 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 
