THE WETTAR. 279 



wing, mostly pass the day in the more open parts of rivers 

 and lakes, where they are very difficult of approach ; and 

 it is not until towards evening that they repair to their 

 feeding-g-roimds, often at a very considerahle distance. 

 Their line of flight is in most instances precisely the 

 same, and this having been ascertained by the fowler, 

 he — at dusk, or early morn, as the case may be — con- 

 ceals himself in their path, and, as soon as tliey make 

 their appearance, pours, from his ambush, a deadly 

 volley amongst them. 



When the season is still furtlier advanced, numerous 

 wild fowl — especially the Golden Eye, many of which 

 pass the winter in the rapids of the Gotha, and other 

 rivers — are lured within gunshot of the fowler by means 

 of IFettar, or artificial decoy birds — a system of shooting 

 occasionally practised by myself, though from the lack of 

 sufficient patience not always successfully. 



Though possessed of a gunning-punt, I had no pnnt- 

 gun, or otherwise, it is proljable, I might have done con- 

 siderable execution with it ; for during migration, especially 

 in the autumn, we were visited by large flocks of several 

 species of wild fowl ; . as also by numbers of both swans 

 and geese. Indeed, with the exception of the late Mr. 

 PLichard Dann, whose residence, Tjolholmen, was on the 

 west coast of Sweden, I never heard of any one in Scandi- 

 navia making use of a punt-gun ; and he, owing to the 

 locality not being very favourable for tlie purpose, Avas not, 

 I believe, very successful. But that great slaughter might 

 be committed with this deadly weapon in tlie lakes and 

 rivers of the Peninsula, may be inferred from the perform- 

 ances of Messrs. Hutchinson and Hodges, in the river 

 Elbe, during the winter of 18i8, where "in twenty days' 

 shooting witli the punt-gun we bagged between us," 

 as Mr. nutchinson himself wrote me, " 1,175 head of 

 wcb-footcd fowl. The greatest number of birds killed 



