RAIL. 
239 
boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as the boat 
moves, until they have an opportunity of escaping unnoticed. 
They are feeble and delicate in every thing but the legs, which 
seem to possess great vigour and energy ; and their bodies 
being so remarkably thin, or compressed, as to be less than 
an inch and a quarter through transversely, they are enabled 
to pass between 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 neighbourhood 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 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 consi- 
derable 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 dozen 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 
