GAME AND ITS PROTECTION. 23 
visits to what should be the paradise of both ducks 
and sportsmen. They all know and regret the 
diminution of wild fowl, and most of them are satis- 
fied from what cause it arises ; but as the immediate 
losses from a change would fall upon themselves 
heavily at first, they shrink from decided action. 
If, however, the birds are to be retained, and pre- 
vented from gradually withdrawing, year after year, 
until they shall desert us in toto, the use of the bat- 
tery must be prevented. When that is done, we shall 
soon again have such days as we once had in and 
about old Raccoon Beach, when sportsmen innume- 
rable collected to welcome the advent of their prey ; 
when the tale and song filled up the long evenings, 
and the ducks quacked their hosannas at early dawn ; 
when every point was occupied by a happy sports- 
man, and every boat came home loaded with game. 
The use of pivot-guns is another reprehensible 
practice that has been so earnestly condemned, even 
among market-gunners, that it has been in a great 
measure abandoned. Still, however, in some quiet 
bay of one of the great lakes of the West, where 
there is no one to observe the iniquity, or of a moon- 
light night on the Chesapeake, the poaching mur- 
derer, sculling his boat down upon an unsuspicious 
flock crowded together and feeding or asleep, will 
discharge a pound or two of coarse shot from his 
diminutive cannon; and wounding hundreds, will 
kill scores of ducks at the one fatal discharge. The 
noise, however, reverberating over land and water, 
scatters the tidings of the guilty act far and wide: 
