110 
RALLUS CAROLINUS. 
SUBGENUS II CREX, ILLIGER. 
233 . RALLUS CAROLINUS , LINNiEUS AND WILSON. 
CAROLINA RAIL. 
WILSON, PLATE XLVIII. FIG. I. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 
Of all our land or water fowl, perhaps none afford 
the sportsman more agreeable amusement, or a mor$ 
delicious repast, than the little bird now before us. 
This amusement is indeed temporary, lasting* only two 
or three hours in the day for four or five weeks in each 
year ; but, as it occurs in the most agreeable and 
temperate of our seasons, is attended with little or no jl 
fatigue to the gunner, and is frequently successful, it 
attracts numerous followers, and is pursued, in such 
places as the birds frequent, with great eagerness and 
enthusiasm. 
The natural history of the rail, or, as it is called in 
Virginia, the sora, and in South Carolina the coot, is 
to the most of our sportsmen involved in profound and 
inexplicable mystery. It comes, they know not whence ; 
and goes, they know not where. No one can detect 
their first moment of arrival ; yet all at once the reedy 
shores, and grassy marshes, of our large rivers swarm 
with them, thousands being sometimes found within 
the space of a few acres. These, when they do venture 
on wing, seem to fly so feebly, and in such short || 
fluttering flights among the reeds, as to render it highly 
improbable to most people that they could possibly 
make their way over an extensive tract of country. 
Yet, on the first smart frost that occurs, the whole 
suddenly disappear, as if they had never been. 
To account for these extraordinary phenomena, it has 
been supposed by some that they bury themselves in 
the mud ; but as this is every year dug into by ditchers 
and people employed in repairing the banks, without 
any of those sleepers being found, where but a few { 
weeks before these birds were innumerable, this theory 
has been generally abandoned. And here their researches 
into this mysterious matter generally end in the common 
