CHAPTER XXV. 



WILD-FOWLING IN DRIFT-ICE. 



* * * * * " Yea, even the fowl — 

 That through the polar summer-months could see 

 A beauty in Spitzbergen's naked isles, 

 Or on the drifted ice-bergs seek a home — 

 Even they had fled, on southern mng, in search 

 Of less inclement shores." 



The Fowler. 



The absence of long'-continued and severe frosts, has done much of 

 late years towards inducing- some wild-fowl shooters to look with 

 indifference on this g-ood old-fashioned diversion ; hut those who are 

 well acquainted with the sport, and who have been accustomed to 

 note the habits and mig-rations of wild-fowl, predict, that as we may 

 fairly look to future winters for severer frosts ; so we may also 

 expect to be visited by thousands of those attractive feathered occu- 

 pants of the waters : and it is foretold by some sportsmen, and with 

 g-ood reason too, that, in the event of a hard winter, the birds will 

 Hock to our shores in greater numbers than ever ; on account of the 

 succession of favourable seasons in the north, for their breeding- and 

 increasing- ; and also because of the comparatively small numbers which 

 have been killed of late years b}^ the punters, and the still smaller 

 numbers which have been captured in decoys. 



With such prospects, the modern sportsman need not despair. 

 England, with her rich and fertile soil, luxuriant meadows, and 

 abundant vegetative productions, offers irresistible enticements to 

 the myriads of aerial wanderers from northern latitudes. 



During hard winters, and when the frost is so severe that the 

 navigation of some of the salt-water rivers about our coast is tem- 

 porarily impeded by ice, wild-fowl are always abundant. The 

 inlnnd ponds and Inkes are frozen, the surface of the eartli is thickly 



