234 



RAIL. 



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 sportsmen, 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 few acres. These, when they do venture 

 on wing, seem to fly so feebly, and in such short fluttering 

 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 in- 

 numerable, 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 Eiver, 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 extraordinary 

 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 ; and, in his own and his negroes' opinion, it looked like 

 nothing in this world but a real sora changing into a frog ! 

 What further confirms this grand discovery is the well-known 

 circumstance of the frogs ceasing to hollow as soon as the sora 

 comes in the fall. 



