SEC. I IMPLEMENTS FOR COLLECTING, AND THEIR USE 7 



skill in the use of long bamboo blow-guns ; and such people are 

 often valuable employes of the collector. I have had no experience 

 with the noiseless air-rjim, which is, in effect, a modified blow-gun, 

 compressed air being the explosive power. Nor can I say much of 

 various methods of trapping birds that may be practised. On these 

 points I must leave you to your own devices, with the remark that 

 horse-hair snares, set over a nest, are often of great service in securing 

 the parent of eggs that might otherwise remain unidentified. I have 

 no practical knowledge of bird -lime. A method of netting birds 

 alive, which I have tried, is both easy and successful. A net of 

 fine green silk, some eight or ten feet square, is stretched perpen- 

 dicularly across a narrow part of one of the little brooks, overgrown 

 with briers and shrubbery, that intersect many of our meadows. 

 Eetreating to a distance, the collector beats along the shrubbery 

 making all the noise he can, urging on the little birds till they reach 

 the almost invisible net and become entangled in trying to fly 

 through. I have in this manner taken a dozen sparrows and the 

 like at one "drive." But the gun can rarely be laid aside for this 

 or any other device. 



Ammunition. — The best powder is that combining strength and 

 cleanliness in the highest compatible degree. In some brands too 

 much of the latter is sacrificed to the former. Other things being 

 equal, a rather coarse powder is preferable, since its slower action 

 tends to throw shot closer. Some numbers are said to be " too 

 quick " for fine breech-loaders. Inexperienced sportsmen and col- 

 lectors almost invariably use too coarse shot. Then two evils result : 

 The number of pellets in a load is decreased, the chances of killing 

 being correspondingly lessened ; and the plumage is badly injured, 

 either by direct mutilation, or by subsequent bleeding through large 

 holes. As already hinted, shot cannot be too fine for your routine 

 collecting. Use "mustard-seed," or "dust-shot," as it is variously 

 called ; it is smaller than any of the sizes usually numbered. As 

 the very finest can only be procured in cities, provide yourself 

 liberally on leaving any centre of civilisation for even a country 

 village, to say nothing of remote regions. A small bird that would 

 have been torn to pieces by a few large pellets, may be riddled with 

 mustard-seed and yet be preservable ; moreover, there is, as a rule, 

 little or no bleeding from such minute holes, which close up by the 

 elasticity of the tissues involved. It is astonishing what large birds 

 may be brought down with these tiny pellets. I have killed hawks 

 with such shot, knocked over a wood-ibis at forty yards, and once 

 shot a wolf dead with No. 10 — though I am bound to say the 

 animal was within a few feet of me. After dust-shot, and the nearest 

 number or two, No. 8 or 7 Avill be found most useful. Water-fowl, 

 thick-skinned sea-birds like loons, cormorants, and pelicans, and a 



