RAIL. 423 
The flight of these birds among the reeds is usually low and, 
shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to more than fifty cr one 
hundred ne When winged, and uninjured in their legs, they swim 
and dive with great rapidity, and are seldom seen to rise again. I 
have several times, on such occasions, discovered them clinging with 
their feet to the reeds under the water, and at other times skulking 
under the floating reeds, with their bill just above the surface. Some- 
times, when wounded, they dive, and, rising under the gunwale of the 
boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as the boat moves, until 
they have an opportunity of escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and 
delicate in every thing but the legs, which seem to possess great vigor 
and energy ; and their bodies being so remarkably thin, or compressed, 
as to be less than an inch and a quarter through transversely, they are 
enabled to pass between the reeds like rats. When seen, they are 
almost constantly jetting up the tai. Yet, though their flight among 
the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, every sportsman who is ac- 
quainted with them here must have seen them occasionally rising to a 
considerable height, stretching out their legs behind them, and flying 
rapidly across the river where it is more than a mile in width. 
Such is the mode of Rail shooting in the neighborhood of Philadel- 
phia. In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James River, 
within the tide water, where the Rail, or Sora, are in prodigious num- 
bers, they are also shot on the wing, but more usually taken at night 
in the following manner:— A kind of iron grate is fixed on the top of 
a stout pole, which is placed like a mast, in a light canoe, and filled 
with fire. The darker the night the more successful is the sport. The 
person who manages the canoe is provided with a light paddle ten or 
twelve feet in length, and, about an hour before high water, proceeds 
through among the reeds, which lie broken and floating on the surface. 
The whole space, for a considerable way round the canoe, is com- 
pletely enlightened ; the birds stare with astonishment, and, as they 
appear, are knocked on the head with a paddle, and thrown into the 
canoe. In this manner, from twenty to eighty dozen have been killed 
by three negroes in the short space of three hours! 
At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous in 
the lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontiers, where another 
species of reed (of which they are equally fond) grows in shallows in 
great abundance. Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on 
whose judgment I can rely, assure me, that they differ in nothing from 
those they have usually killed on the shores of the Delaware and 
Schuylkill: they are equally fat, and exquisite eating. On the sea- 
coast of New Jersey, where these reeds are not to be found, this bird 
is altogether unknown; though along the marshes of Maurice River, 
and other tributary streams of the Delaware, and wherever the reeds 
abound, the Rail are sure to be found also. Most of them leave Penn- 
sylvania before the end of October, and the southern states early in 
November, though numbers linger in the warm southern marches the 
whole winter. A very worthy gentleman, Mr. Harrison, who lives in 
Kittiwan, near a creek of that name, on the borders of James River, 
informed me, that, in burning his meadows early in March, they gen- 
erally raise and destroy several of these birds. That the great body 
of these Rail winter in countries beyond the United States, is ren- 
