188 
RAIL. 
passage to or from the countries where they are regularly found 
at different seasons of the year; and this for the very same rea- 
sons, 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 
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 solicitious 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 
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 intelli- 
gence 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 De- 
laware, 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 bo- 
tanist, 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 colour, with brown or blackish spots; the young 
run off as soon as they break the shell, are then quite black, and 
