30 



RAIL 



These three species are well known to migrate into Britain 

 early in spring, and to leave it for the more southern parts of Eu- 

 rope in autumn. Yet they are rarely or never seen on their pas- 

 sage to or from the countries where they are regularly found at 

 different seasons of the year; and this for the very same reasons 

 that they are so rarely seen even in the places where they inhabit. 



It is not therefore at all surprising, that the regular migra- 

 tions of the American Rail or Sora should in like manner have es- 

 caped notice in a country like this, whose population bears so small 

 a proportion to its extent; and where the study of natural history 

 is so little attended to. But that these migrations do actually take 

 place, from north to south, and vice versa^ may be fairly inferred 

 from the common practice of thousands of other species of birds 

 less solicitous of concealment, and also from the following facts. 



On the twenty-second day of February I killed two of these 

 birds in the neighbourhood of Savannah in Georgia, where they 

 have never been observed during the summer. On the second of 

 the May following I shot another in a watery thicket below Phila- 

 delphia, betweeji the rivers Schuylkill and Delaware, in what is 

 usually called the JVeck, This last was a male, in full plumage. 

 We are also informed, that they arrive at Hudson's Bay early in 

 June, and again leave that settlement for the south early in au- 

 tumn. That many of them also remain here to breed is proven 

 by the testimony of persons of credit and intelligence with whom 

 I have conversed, both here and on James river in Virginia^ who 

 have seen their nests, eggs and young. In the extensive mea- 

 dows that border the Schuylkill and Delaware it was formerly 

 common, before the country was so thickly settled there, to find 

 young Rail in the first mowing time among the grass. Mr. James 

 Bartram, brother to the botanist, a venerable and still active man 

 of eighty three, and well acquainted with this bird, says, that he 

 has often seen and caught young Rail in his own meadows in the 

 month of June; he has also seen their nest, which he says is usually 



