- 
310 MANUAL FOR 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—Rallus Carolinersis—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 
