A MORNING WITH NATURE, ETC. Dine 
last half hour you have been fooling with the hammers, 
raising and lowering them. Your fingers are cold, and 
the hammets slipped away from you; that’s how it hap- 
pened. Now, cock your gun, and leave it that way. 
Keep your finger off the trigger, your thumb from the 
hammers, and it won’t occur again.” 
He solemnly promised it should not happen again, 
but it’s an actual fact that his gun did go off again in 
that same manner later in the day. He was nervous 
and excitable, and in constant fear lest some accident 
might happen with a cocked gun, so he kept the ham- 
mers down; then when a duck came near or threatened 
to approach us, he raised the hammers in anticipation 
of ashot. If the duck swerved off, then the hammers 
were lowered; and this constant raising and lowering, 
seconded with cold fingers and a nervous apprehension 
that something mzgit happen, was the cause of the un- 
expected firing. Feeling that a change of air and a 
little exercise might smooth his ruffled feelings, his at- 
tention was called to a flock of mallards alighting in a 
slough about a hundred yards from us. They were 
coaxing flying ducks from our decoys, and at my sug- 
gestion my companion wentover to rout them out. He 
was not gone long; it didi’t seem to me over ten 
minutes, but on his return he was pleasantly surprised 
to find lying on the water nine mallards which I had 
killed while he was gone. They afforded me some of 
the prettiest shooting I ever enjoyed. They came in, 
in pairs, as fast as I could load and shoot,—-and the last 
bird shot at was the one missed, the first five pairs 
having been killed insuccession. Picking up the ducks 
he carried them out on the dry bank, and tied them 
together. Much to his astonishment, he found we had 
