CLAPPER RAIL. 
I8S 
esteemed for food, being frequently collected by the neigh- 
boring inhabitants; and so abundant are the nests in the 
marshes of New Jersey that a single person, accustomed to 
the search, has been known to collect a hundred dozen in the 
course of a day. Like other gregarious and inoffensive birds, 
they have numerous enemies besides man ; and the crow, fox, 
and minx come in for their share, not only of the eggs and 
young, but also devour the old birds besides. From the 
pounce of the Hawk they can more readily defend themselves 
by dodging and threading their invisible paths through the 
sedge. The nature of the ground they select for their nurse- 
ries and its proximity to the sea, renders their thronging com- 
munity liable also to accidents of a more extensively fatal 
kind; and sometimes after the prevalence of an eastwardly 
storm, not uncommon in the early part of June, the marshes 
become inundated by the access of the sea, and great numbers 
of the Rails perish, — at least, the females, now sitting, are so 
devoted to their eggs as to remain on the nest and drown 
rather than desert it. At such times the males, escaping from 
the deluge, and such of their mates as have not yet begun to 
sit, are seen by hundreds walking about, exposed and bewil- 
dered, while the shores for a great extent are strewed with the 
dead bodies of the luckless females. The survivors, how'ever, 
wasting no time in fruitless regret, soon commence to nest 
anew ; and sometimes when their nurseries have been a second 
time destroyed by the sea, in a short time after, so strong is 
the instinct and vigor of the species that the nests seem as 
numerous in the marshes as though nothing destructive had 
ever happened. 
The young of the Clapper Rail are clad, at first, in the same 
black down as those of the Virginian species, and are only dis- 
tinguishable by their superior size, by having a spot of white 
on their auriculars, and a line of the same color along the side 
of the breast, belly, and fore part of the thigh. They run very 
nimbly through the grass and reeds, so as to be taken with 
considerable difficulty, and are thus, at this early period, like 
their parents, without the aid of their wings, capable of elud- 
