116 
RALLUS CAROLINUS. 
floating reeds, as also the backwardness of the game to 
spring as the tide decreases, oblige them to return. 
Several boats are sometimes within a short distance of 
each other, and a perpetual cracking of musketry 
prevails along the whole reedy shores of the river. In 
these excursions it is not uncommon for an active and 
expert marksman to kill ten or twelve dozen in a tide. 
They are usually shot singly, though I have known five 
killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled piece. 
These instances, however, are rare. 
The flight of these birds among the reeds is usually 
low ; and, shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to 
more than fifty or one hundred yards. When winged 
and uninjured in their legs, they swim and dive with 
great rapidity, and are seldom seen to rise again. I 
have several times, on such occasions, discovered them 
clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, 
and at other times skulking under the floating reeds, 
with their hill just above the surface. Sometimes, 
when wounded, they dive, and, rising under the gunwale 
of the 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 hut 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 neighbour- 
hood 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 wfing, but more usually taken at night 
in the follow ing manner : A kind of iron grate is fixed 
