262 WILD SPORTS rsr THE SOUTH. 



" You Rose ! the coffee !" shouted Lou ; but the girl 

 did not hear, and Lou had to bring the coffee herself, 

 with the Doctor and Mike bearing the ducks and the 

 snipe. The birds were laid out in state on bark platters, 

 and the coffee, after first removing the bag of grounds, 

 was carefully poured out in equal portions, in the five tin 

 cups that ornamented the table. 



Now, there are various kinds of wild ducks, and with- 

 out referring one to the natural histories, under the head 

 of Aves, the reader to count the varieties need only to 

 recall to his recollection the various sensations received 

 from eating them. Sometimes they have been tough 

 leathery tough, these were the Old-wives ; it is generally 

 only the young wives that buy them ; others there are 

 that taste like mackerel, these are the fishy ducks ; others 

 that are dry, like corned beef, these are Pharoah's lean 

 kine; others again that are just duck, and nothing more, 

 you would hardly suspect them, under their stuffing of 

 acrid sage and rancid onion, to be duck if you saw their 

 feet, you might be positive; these were the common 

 wild duck, peppered with shot, jammed in crates, putre- 

 fied by time, and bought by hotel-keepers and noodles ; 

 when cooked, they are anything you choose to name 

 them. 



Another kind of duck, like those the Doctor was put- 

 ting on the table, is a young, fat wild duck, either a 

 Wood-duck, Teal, or Black-duck, and, as such, is peer to 

 any game that ever feasted a hunter. It was nested in 

 a tussock of grass, on some of the sedgy shores of the 



