TRAP-SHOOTING. 291 
The most rapid way is to use five traps, in single- 
bird shooting, and employ five boys—with a relay 
of five others when the first are exhausted—to set 
them ; boys are naturally more active than men, and 
are buoyed up by an excitement that the latter do 
not feel. The five birds are shot at before the traps 
are refilled; and by the time the last bird is released 
the boys stand armed with a fresh one apiece, ready 
to reset the traps in a moment. In this mode, with 
good luck in not having too many birds that have 
to be retrieved, and with regularity, fifteen hundred 
birds may be shot at in ten hours. 
The difficulty of obtaining pigeons in our seaboard 
cities has been so great of late years, as advancing 
civilization has reduced the number, and driven 
westward the migratory hosts which once visited 
the Eastern States, that not only has the expense 
enormously increased, but the practice of trap-shoot- 
ing has diminished. The ordinary price along the 
Atlantic coast is from twenty to thirty dollars a 
hundred, and the supply is so small, that the collec- 
tion of any considerable number, even at that rate, 
is extremely difficult. 
As skill in the act of shooting birds released from 
a trap, where the sportsman stands prepared, gun in 
hand and nerves disturbed, if at all, only by the 
presence of spectators, does not imply ability to 
acquit oneself well in the field, and tends but little 
to that end; so it is pursued not for improvement 
so much as for temporary excitement during the dull 
months of the year. Pigeons nest in June, a season 
