310 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



ment is adopted, stools or decoys should not be adopted 

 as for the shore birds of the same family. I think it 

 would succeed. 



The chaise-method, however, is regarded as the genuine 

 and correct manner of the sport, and is the only one which 

 the genuine plover-shooter deigns to adopt. After all, it 

 appears to me to be rather a cockney sort of shooting, not 

 worthy to be looked on as a field sport, though it may 

 answer to while away the monotony of a watering-place 

 day, and drown the deep disgust which must rise in every 

 sober breast, at sight of the doleful doings of the young 

 Americans and Americanesses in their diurnal polka ball- 

 rooms. It is but a knack, at best ; and were it not for the 

 surpassing excellence of the plover on the table, he would, I 

 fancy, be generally suffered to go free in the field, and his 

 pursuit would be held " tolerable, and not to be endured." 



Almost simultaneously with plover-shooting on the 

 upland, commences rail-shooting on the reedy flats of the 

 rivers on which this curious and delicate little bird 

 breeds to the northward. 



The sora rail — Ballus Carolinensis — winters far to 

 the southward, and on the breaking of the spring comes 

 on to make its nest wherever there are flats and marshes 

 on the margins of tide rivers, alternately submerged and 

 left bare by the rise or subsidence of the waters. In 

 such places it rears its young in vast multitudes, and is 

 ready for the gun early in August, before which period 

 they are rarely to be seen, although long anterior to it 

 they can be heard clucking over all the marshy meadows, 

 and among the reed beds in which they abound. Their 



