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-grounds, often at a very considerable 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 they make 

 their appearance, pours, from his ambush, a deadly 

 volley amongst them. 



When the season is still further 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 lF~ettar, 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 punt- 

 gun, or otherwise, it is probable, 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. 

 Richard Danri, 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 the purpose, was not, 

 I believe, very successful. But that great slaughter might 

 be committed with this deadly weapon in the 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 1818, where "in twenty clays' 

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

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

 web-footed fowl. The greatest number of birds killed 



