CAROLINA RAIL. 
113 
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 solicitous of concealment, 
and also from the following facts. 
On the 22d 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 2d 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 proven by the testimony of persons of 
credit and intelligence with whom I have conversed, both 
here and on James Fiver in Virginia, who have seen 
their nests, eggs, and young. In the extensive meadows 
that border the Schuylkill and Delaware 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 botanist, 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 J une ; 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 run 
about among the grass like mice. The old ones he has 
very rarely observed at that time, but the young often. 
Almost every old settleFalong these meadows with 
whom I have conversed, has occasionally seen young 
rail in mowing time ; and all agree in describing them 
as covered with blackish down. There can, therefore, 
vol. in. h 
