160 
THE GREAT RED-BREASTED RAIL. 
acute. Plumage rather stiff ; feathers of the forehead with the shaft enlarged, 
and extended beyond the tip. Wings very short and broad ; third quill 
longest. Tail very short, much rounded, of twelve feeble rounded feathers, 
scarcely longer than the coverts. 
THE GREAT RED-BREASTED RAIL, OR FRESH-WATER 
MARSH-HEN. 
Rallus elegans, Aud . 
PLATE CCGIX. — Male and Young. 
No doubt exists in my mind that Wilson considered this beautiful bird 
as merely the adult of Rallus crepitans , the manners of which he described, 
as studied at Great Egg Harbour, in New Jersey, while he gave in his 
works the figure and colouring of the present species. My friend Thomas 
Nuttall has done the same, without, I apprehend, having seen the two 
birds together. Always unwilling to find faults in so ardent a student of 
nature as Wilson, I felt almost mortified when, after having in the com- 
pany of my worthy and learned friend, the Reverend John Bachman, 
carefully examined the habits of both species, which, in form and general 
appearance, are closely allied, I discovered the error which he had in this 
instance committed. Independently of the great difference as to size 
between the two species, there are circumstances connected with their habits 
which mark them as distinct. The Rallus elegans is altogether a fresh-water 
bird, while the R. crepitans never removes from the salt-water marshes, 
that are met with along our eastern Atlantic coasts, from the Jerseys to the 
Gulf of Mexico. Nay, the present species is found at considerable distances 
inland, where it breeds and spends the whole year ; whereas the latter never 
goes farther from its maritime haunts than the borders of the salt-marshes, 
and this merely on certain occasions, when driven thither by the high risings 
of tides. The Fresh-water Marsh-hen, besides, is confined to the Southern 
States, a few stragglers only having been observed farther eastward than the 
State of Pennsylvania, and these only in fresh-water meadows. 
So long ago as the year 1810, on the 29th of May, I caught one of these 
birds, a female, at Henderson, in the State of Kentucky, when I made the 
