160 • THE GREAT RED-BREASTED RAIL. 



acute. Plumage rather stiff; feathers of the forehead with the shaft enlarged, 

 and extended beyond the tip. Wings very short and broad; third quill 

 longest. Tail very short, much rounded, of twelve feeble rounded feathers, 

 scarcely longer than the coverts. 



THE GREAT RED-BREASTED RAIL, OR FRESH-WATER 



MARSH-HEN. 



-+ Rallus elegans, Jiud. 



PLATE CCCIX Male and Young. 



No doubt exists in my mind that Wilson considered this beautiful bird 

 as merely the adult of Rallus crepitans, the manners of which he described, 

 as studied at Great Egg Harbour, in New Jersey, while he gave in his 

 works the figure and colouring of the present species. My friend Thomas 

 Nuttall has done the same, without, I apprehend, having seen the two 

 birds together. Always unwilling to find faults in so ardent a student of 

 nature as Wilson, I felt almost mortified when, after having, in the com- 

 pany of my worthy and learned friend, the Reverend John Bachman, 

 carefully examined the habits of both species, which, in form and general 

 appearance, are closety allied, I discovered the error which he had in this 

 instance committed. Independently of the great difference as to size 

 between the two species, there are circumstances connected with their habits 

 which mark them as distinct. The Rallus elegans is altogether a fresh-water 

 bird, while the R. crepitans never removes from the salt-water marshes, 

 that are met with along our eastern Atlantic coasts, from the Jerseys to the 

 Gulf of Mexico. Nay, the present species is found at considerable distances 

 inland, where it breeds and spends the whole year; whereas the latter never 

 goes farther from its maritime haunts than the borders of the salt-marshes, 

 and this merely on certain occasions, when driven thither by the high risings 

 of tides. The Fresh-water Marsh-hen, besides, is confined to the Southern 

 States, a few stragglers only having been observed farther eastward than the 

 State of Pennsylvania, and these only in fresh-water meadows. 



So long ago as the year 1S10, on the 29th of May, I caught one of these 

 birds, a female, at Henderson, in the State of Kentucky, when I made the 



