530 ; VIRGINIAN RAIL. 
2 
them in wet places, in the groves,-only in spring. It feeds less on 
vegetable, and more on animal, food than the Common Rail. During 
the months of September and October, when the reeds and wild oats 
swarm with the latter species, feeding on their nutritious seeds, a few 
of the present kind are occasionally found; but not one for five 
hundred of the others. The food of the present species consists of 
-smal] snail shells, worms, and the larve of insects, which it extracts 
from the mud; hence the cause of its greater length of bill, to enable 
it the more readily to reach its food. On this account, also, its flesh 
is much inferior to that of the other. In most of its habits, its thin, 
compressed form of body, its aversion to take wing, and the dexterity 
with which it runs or conceals itself among the grass and sedge, are 
exactly similar to those of the Common Rail, from which genus, 
notwithstanding the difference of its bill, it ought not to be sep- 
arated. 
This bird is known to some of the inhabitants along the sea-coast 
of New Jersey, by the name of the Fresh-Water Mud Hen, this last 
being the common appellation of the Clapper Rail, which the present 
species resembles in every thing but size. The epithet Fresh-Water 
1S given it, because of its frequenting those parts of the marsh only 
where fresh-water springs rise through the bogs into the salt marshes. 
In these places it usually constructs its nest, one of which, through 
the active exertions of my friend, Mr. Ord, while traversing with me 
the salt marshes of Cape May, we had the good fortune to discover. 
It was built in the bottom of a tuft of grass, in the midst of an almost 
impenetrable quagmire, and was composed altogether of old, wet grass 
and rushes. The eggs had been floated out of the nest by the ex- 
traordinary rise of the tide in a violent north-east storm, and lay scat- 
tered about among the drift weed. The female, however, still lingered 
near the spot, to which she was so attached, as to suffer herself to be 
taken by hand. She doubtless.intended to repair her nest, and com- 
mence laying anew; as, during the few hours that she was in our 
possession, she laid one egg, corresponding in all respects with the 
others. On examining those floated out of the nest, they contained 
young, perfectly formed, but dead. The usual number of eggs is 
from six to ten. They are shaped like those of the domestic Hen, 
measuring one inch and two tenths long, by very nearly half an inch 
in width, and are of a dirty white, or pale cream color, sprinkled with 
specks of reddish and pale purple, most numerous near the great end. 
They commence laying early in May, and probably raise two brood in 
the season. I suspect this from the circumstance oi’ Mr. Ord having, 
late in the month of July, brought me several young ones of only a 
few days old, which were caught among the grass near the border of 
the Delaware. The parent Rail showed great solicitude for their 
-safety. They were wholly black, except a white spot on the bill; 
were covered with a fine down, and had a soft, piping note. In the 
month of June of the same year, another pair of these birds began to 
-breed amidst a boggy spring in one of Mr. Bartram’s meadows, but 
were unfortunately destroyed. ) 
The Virginian Rail is migratory, never wintering in the Northern or 
Middle States. It makes its first appearance in Pennsylvania early in 
May, and leaves the country on the first smart frosts, generally in 
