Species III. RALLUS CAROLINVS. 
RAIL. 
|Plate XLVIII. Fig. 1, Male.] 
Soree, Catesb. i., 70. — Arct. Zool. p. 491, No. 409. — Little American Water Hen, 
Edw. 144. — Le Red de Yirginie, Buff, viii., 165.* 
Of all our land or water fowl, perhaps none afford the sportsman 
more agreeable amusement, or a more delicious repast, than the little 
bird now before us. This amusement is indeed temporary, lasting only 
two or three hours in the day, for four or five weeks in each year ; but 
as it occurs in the most agreeable and temperate of our seasons, is 
attended with little or no fatigue to the gunner, and is frequently suc- 
cessful, it attracts numerous followers, and is pursued, in such places as 
the birds frequent, with great eagerness and enthusiasm. 
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 whither. 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 some- 
times found within the space of a few acres. These, when they do ven- 
ture 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 Avay 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 innumerable, 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 pro- 
found inquirers, however, not discouraged with these difficulties, have 
* Rallus Carolinus, Linn. Si/st. p. 153, No. 5, ed. 10. — Gallinula Carolina, Lath. 
Ind. Orn. p. 771, No. 17. 
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