192 
RAIL. 
prodigious numbers, they are also shot on the wing, but more 
usually taken at night in the following 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 enlightened; 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 judgment 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 No- 
vember; 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 
beyond the United States, is rendered highly probable from 
their being so frequently met with at sea, between our shore.s 
and the West India islands. A captain Douglass informed me, 
