314 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
and a cut of which is prefixed to this paper, though it is 
less common to the northward and eastward—the rail 
shooter frequently gets a chance. 
Prodigious bags of these easily killed and dull flying 
little birds are frequently made, particularly on the Dela- 
ware River, in the vicinity of Chester, and about the mouth 
of the Schuylkill River, in which localities as many as 175, 
and even 200 birds, have been killed by a single gun, and 
during a single tide, which does not, at most, give above 
two and a half or three hours’ shooting. 
Still, notwithstanding all this, and despite the admitted 
excellence of both rail and reed-bird on the table, I 
think the pastime but a poor one; and if it were not that 
there is little else to do at that season of the year, and 
that it does serve to keep the hand in, one which would 
be, to the full, as much honored in the breach as in the 
observance. 
All sorts of absurd stories used to prevail about this little 
bird, whose slow flight and lazy habits appear to render it 
impossible for it to make long over sea migrations. It was 
sapiently held, and I believe still is, by the James River 
negroes, in Virginia, and the longshore Jerseymen of 
Gloucester and Salem counties, that it turns into a frog in 
the winter, and sleeps till spring in the mud. It is, how- 
ever, clearly proved that it is a regular bird of passage, 
often boarding ships at sea under stress of weather. 
