GAME AND ITS PROTECTION. - 95 
Every one—whether the gentleman who, in search 
of health or pleasure, visits the muddy bays or sand- 
spits of our coast, or the market-gunner who has 
learnt naught of useful labor for many years but to 
handle skilfully his heavy double-barrel—every one, 
we say, who pursues wild-fowl, whether for sport or 
business, is interested in enforcing upon his friends 
and neighbors the necessity of discontinuing the use 
of the battery and pivot-gun. Although the results 
of the day’s shooting may be diminished for a time, 
they will both gain in the long run; and we shall 
once more see the crowds of geese, brant, and ducks 
stretching in interminable lines across the sky; and 
have them flying by the points where we hide, or 
dropping to our stools near by, as plenteously every 
day as we can now kill them, in exceptional cases, 
from the battery. When their feeding-grounds are 
undisturbed, their multitudinous hosts will again 
cover thé waters of our bays, and hold their noisy 
consultations over the many theories and crotchets 
which are disputed in duck philosophy. Then the 
true sportsman will visit his favorite tavern, located 
conveniently at the edge of the salt meadows, cer- 
tain, in the proper season, of having fair sport 5 and 
the willing bay-man will again reap rich and per- 
manent harvests, either for his patron or himself. 
Now a good bag is so rare that gentlemen seldom 
go to Long Island for duck-shooting, and the inha- 
bitants lose a valuable custom in consequence; and 
although, by selecting a propitious occasion, the 
market-man sometimes still kills a great number, he 
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