existence of a planter on the James River, in Virginia, who is well convinced that the Sora changes in the autumn into a frog, and resumes its wings and plumage in the spring, thus renewing the absurd old legend of Gerardus Cambrensis in relation to the tree which bears shell-fish called _barnacles_, whence in due season issue _barnacle geese_. The Sora Rail arrives in the Northern States in April or May. I saw one killed myself this spring in a deep tide marsh on the Salem creek, near Pennsville, in New Jersey, on the 25th of the former month, which was in pretty good condition. They migrate so far north as to Hudson’s Bay, where they arrive early in June, and depart again for the south early in the autumn. They breed in May and June, making an inartificial nest of dry grass, usually in a tussock in the marsh, and laying four or five eggs of dirty white, with brown or blackish-white spots. The young run as soon as they are hatched, and skulk about in the grass like young mice, being covered with black down. The Sora Rail is liable to a curious sort of epileptic fit, into which it appears to fall in consequence of the paroxysms of fear or rage to which it is singularly liable. The following account of the habits and the method of shooting this bird, from Wilson’s great work on the Birds of America, is so admirably graphic, truthful, and life-like, that I prefer transcribing it for my own work on Field Sports, into which I copied it entire as incomparably superior to any thing I have elsewhere met on the subject, to recording it myself with, perhaps, inferior vigor.