UPLAND SHOOTING. 
293 
RAIL SHOOTING. 
ROM the middle of August, until 
the setting in of wintry frosts, 
the pursuit of this curious, and ex¬ 
cellent little bird, may be followed 
in the localities which he fre¬ 
quents, by those who care for the 
sport. 
It is not by any means compa¬ 
rable to those kinds of shooting, 
which are followed with dogs in the field, among varied scenery 
and diverse accidents of sport; nor is the bird very sporting in 
its habits, nor is much skill required to shoot him. 
He is, however, delicious to eat; he literally abounds on the 
reedy mud-flats of those rivers which he affects ; and his season 
is one at which there is little or no other occupation for the 
sportsman. So that, between the epicurean desire for his flesh, 
the absence of more agreeable and exciting sport, and the very 
easiness of the pursuit, which, to young hands and bad shots, is 
a recommendation, the Rail is very eagerly pursued; and dur¬ 
ing those periods of the tide, which permit his pursuit, a stran¬ 
ger might well believe, during the Rail season, almost anywhere 
on the Delaware, sixty miles below, or thirty above Philadel¬ 
phia, that the outposts of two armies were engaged in a brisk 
skirmish, so incessant is the rattle of small arms. 
It is the habit of this little bird to skulk and run among the 
reeds and water-oats of the flats which he inhabits; and, owing 
to the peculiar form of his long, flat-sided, wedge-like body, 
with the legs situated far behind, and the wings closely com- 
