RAIL-SHOOTING. 311 



favorite haunts are the wild rice flats on the borders of 

 many of the tide rivers of the Atlantic seaboard, as the 

 James River in Virginia, the Susquehanna and Dela- 

 ware, and their tributaries, the Earitan, the Passaic, the 

 Hackensack, and some other streams of New Jersey, on 

 which they literally swarm during the season, feeding in 

 company with the reed-birds and marsh blackbirds in 

 countless swarms, and becoming so fat that they can hard- 

 ly fly, on the seeds of the aquatic rice, or oat, as it is other- 

 wise termed. 



The rail is singular in habits ; it can run like a mouse 

 among the stalks of the wild rice, and although it has a 

 strong scent, which dogs will readily own and eagerly fol- 

 low, it cannot be forced by them to take wing, with all 

 their exertions ; so much so that, when the flats are dry 

 and the tide out, one may beat with the best setters or 

 pointers in the world until he is weary, and that, too, where 

 there are birds in millions, without raising half a dozen in 

 a day. 



They fly very slowly and heavily, when they do rise, with 

 their legs hanging down, and rarely go above twenty, or 

 five-and-twenty yards before they drop, affording the easiest 

 shots that can be imagined. So exceedingly slow, indeed, 

 and heavy is their flight, that if one have been much used 

 to shoot sharp-flying birds, snipe more especially, he is 

 not unlikely to miss them at first by shooting before them, 

 or over them when rising, instead of behind or below them, 

 as he is apt to do with any sharp-flying game. 



The only method of killing rail, with any success, is 

 from boats, driven over the flats and through the reeds 



