RAIL. 
385 
inch and a quarter through transversely, they are enabled to pass be- 
tween the reeds like rats. When seen, they are almost constantly 
jetting up the tail. Yet, though their flight among the reeds seems 
feeble and fluttering, every sportsman, who is acquainted with them 
here, must have seen them occasionally rising to a considerable height, 
stretching out their legs behind them, and flying rapidly across the 
river, where it is more than a mile in width. 
Such is the mode of Rail-shooting in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. 
In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James river, within the 
tide water, where the Rail, or Sora, are in prodigious numbers, they 
are also shot on the wing, but more usually taken at night in the follow- 
ing manner : — A kind of iron grate is fixed on the top of a stout pole, 
which is placed like a mast, in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The 
darker the night the more successful is the sport. The person who 
manages the canoe is provided with a light paddle, ten or twelve feet in 
length ; and about an hour before high-water proceeds through among 
the reeds, which lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole 
space, for a considerable way round the canoe, is completely enlight- 
ened ; the birds stare with astonishment, and as they appear, are 
knocked on the head with the paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In 
this manner from twenty to eighty dozens have been killed by three 
negroes, in the short space of three hours. 
At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous in the 
lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontiers, where another species 
of reed (of which they are equally fond) grows in shallows, in great 
abundance. Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose judg- 
ment I can rely, assure me, that they differ in nothing from those they 
have usually killed on the shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill ; they 
are equally fat, and exquisite eating. On the seacoast of New Jersey, 
where these reeds are not to be found, this bird is altogether unknown ; 
though along the marshes of Maurice river, and other tributary streams 
of the Delaware, and wherever the reeds abound, the Rail are sure to 
be found also. Most of them leave Pennsylvania before the end of 
October, and the Southern States early in November ; though numbers 
linger in the warm southern marshes the whole winter. A very worthy 
gentleman, Mr. Harrison, who lives in Kittiwan, near a creek of that 
name, on the borders of James river, informed me, that in burning his 
meadows early in March, they generally raise and destroy several of 
these birds. That the great body of these Rail winter in countries be- 
yond the United States, is rendered highly probable from their being so 
frequently met with at sea, between our shores and the West India 
Islands. A Captain Douglass informed me, that on his voyage from 
St. Domingo to Philadelphia, and more than a hundred miles from the 
capes of the Delaware, one night the man at the helm was alarmed by 
Vol. II.— 25 
