RAIL. A419 
year; but, as it occurs in the most agreeable and temperate of our 
seasons, is attended with little or no fatigue to the gunner, and is 
frequently successful, it attracts numerous followers, and is pursued, 
in such places as the birds frequent, with great eagerness and enthu- 
siasm. 
The natural history of the Rail, or, as it is called in Virginia, the 
Sora, and in South Carolina, the Coot, is, to the most of our sports- 
men, involved in profound and inexplicable mystery. It comes, they 
know not whence; and goes, they know not where. No one can 
detect their first moment of arrival; yet all at once the reedy shores 
and grassy marshes of our large rivers swarm with them, thousands 
being sometimes found within the space of a fewacres, These, when 
they do venture on wing, seem to fly so feebly, and in such short flut- 
tering flights among the reeds, as to render it highly improbable to 
most people that they could possibly make their way over an extensive 
tract of country. Yet, on the first smart frost that occurs, the whole 
suddenly disappear, as if they had never been. 
To account for these extraordinary phenomena, it has been supposed 
by some that they bury themselves in the mud; but as this is every 
year dug into by ditchers, and people employed in repairing the banks, 
without any of those sleepers being found, where but a few weeks 
before these birds were innumerable, this theory has been generally 
abandoned. And here their researches into this mysterious matter 
generally end in the common exclamation of “ What can become of 
them!” Some profound inquirers, however, not discouraged with 
these difficulties, have prosecuted their researches with more success ; 
and one of those, living a few years ago near the mouth of James 
River, in Virginia, where the Rail, or Sora, are extremely numerous, 
has (as I was informed on the spot) lately discovered that they change 
into frogs! having himself found in his meadows an animal of an ex- 
traordinary kind, that appeared to be neither a Sora nor a frog, but, 
as he expressed it, “something between the two.” He carried it to 
his negroes, and afterwards took it home, where it lived three days; 
performed ; their time for exertion is evening and morning, often during the night ; 
then they feed, and, during breeding season, utter the incessant and unharmonious 
ery which almost all possess. The ery is remarkable in all that I have heard, ap- 
pearing to be uttered sometimes within a few yards, and, in a second or two, as if 
al an opposite part of the ground. The Land Rail possesses this ventriloquism to 
a great extent, and, knowing their swift running powers, I at first thought that the 
bird was actually traversing the ficld; and it was not until I had observed one 
perched upoa a stone utter its ery for some time, and give full evidence of its pow- 
ers, that I. became convinced of the contrary. The Comerake, and, indeed, I 
rather think most of the others, and also the Rails, seem to remain stationary when 
uttering the ery. A stone, clod of*earth, or old sod wal, is the common calling 
place of our own bird; and they may be easily.watched, in the beginuing of sum- 
mer, if approached with caution, before the herbage begins to thicken. They seem 
‘to feed on larger prey than what are assigned to them: large water insects, and 
the smaller reptiles, may assist in sustaining the aquatie species ; while slugs and 
larger snails will furuish subsistence to the others. I have found the common 
short-tailed field mouse in the stomach of our Land Rail. 
Their flesh is generally delicate, some as much esteemed as the American bird, 
and the young, before commencing their migrations, become extremely fat. 
Crex Carolinus is the only species of the genus yet discovered in North America, 
and is peculiar to that continent. — En. : 
