174 AN EAST COAST NATURALIST 



wintry weather, more especially "hard" fowl, i.e. 

 Golden-eyes, Tufted Ducks, Scaups, and Pochards, 

 that cripples were seldom pursued: it did not pay 

 for the time lost in recovering them ; and few carried 

 a shoulder gun to " settle " the poor things, which 

 were left to struggle until drowning mercifully ended 

 their sufferings, or the wind and tide drifted them 

 to the walls, where, in the hollows and holes in the 

 stone embankment, they hid to die slowly, or to 

 fall into the clutches of the rats, which there " lived 

 like fighting cocks." Certain men who had no guns 

 would patrol the walls, assisted in their search by 

 keen -scented mongrel dogs. In this way they 

 sometimes made quite a bag of crippled birds, and 

 so earned a day's wage by disposing of them. The 

 Messrs. Paget l make reference to a dog kept by a 

 marshman, which on its own account used to thus 

 search for wounded fowl, taking them home by the 

 nearest cut across ditches and over stiles to its 

 master. 



That better prices were sometimes obtained for 

 unusual "curios," as strange birds were called, is 

 true, for some of the 'cuter wildfowlers were on the 



1 Sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth, by C. J. and J. Paget, 

 1834. 



