CHAPTER LXXI. 



WILD-FOWLING IN AMERICA. 



"A weary waste ! — 

 Wo passed tlirough pools, where mi\scle, clam, and wilk, 

 Clove to their gravelly beds ; o'er slimy rocks, 

 Ridgy and dark, with dank fresh fuci green, 

 - Where the prawn wriggled, and the tiny crab 

 Slid sideway from our path, until we gaiu'd 

 The land's extremest point, a sandy jut, — 

 Narrow, and by the weltering waves begirt 

 Around ; and there we laid us down, and watch'd, 

 While from the west the pale moon disappear'd, 

 Pronely, the sea-fowl and the coming dawn." 



The Fowler ; hy Delta. 



Wild-fowl are, probably, as numerous in America as in any 

 quarter of the globe. Some of tlie States of tliat country are most 

 favourably adapted to their reception ; thoug-h the modern system of 

 draining- is vigorously progressing- in many parts, with the same 

 gigantic strides it has made in England j and thus some of the 

 favourite haunts of the aquatic species have been considerably en- 

 croached upon. 



The drowned lands of Orange County, the meadows of Chatham 

 and Pine Brook, the Passaic and its tributaries, before the modern 

 system of draining- and embanking, offered the fairest possible retreats 

 for wild-fowl. In those parts thousands of acres of luxuriant soil 

 were annually covered with shallow water ; and those inundated flats 

 were sometimes literally blackened with all the varieties of wild-fowl 

 known throughout the land.* 



But it is not in those parts of America only, that wild-fowl are so 

 numerous. They abound in all the States of the country, wherever 



* Vkle Herbert's " Field Sports in the United States :" a.d. 1848. 



