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RAIL. 
Spotted Rail of the same country, which in its plumage approaches 
nearer to our Rail, is another notable example of the same general 
habit of the genus. " Its common abode," says the same writer, " is 
in low swampy grounds, in which are pools or streamlets overgrown 
with willows, reeds and rushes, where it lurks and hides itself with 
great circumspection ; it is wild, solitary and shy, and will swim, dive 
or skulk under any cover, and sometimes suffer itself to be knocked on 
the bead, rather than rise before the sportsman and his dog." The 
Water Rail of the same country is equally noted for the like habits. 
In short, the whole genus possess this strong family character in a very 
remarkable degree. 
These three species are well known to migrate into Britain early in 
spring, and to leave it for the more southern parts of Europe in autumn. 
Yet they are rarely or never seen in their passage 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 migrations of 
the American Rail or Sora should, in like manner, have escaped 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 neighborhood 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 Philadelphia, between the rivers 
Schuylkill and Delaware, in what is usually called the Neck. 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 autumn. That many of them also remain here to breed 
is proved 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 meadows 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 in a tussock of grass, is formed of a little 
dry grass, and has four or five eggs of a dirty whitish color, with brown 
