286 SPORT INDEED 



"Well," I answered, "brant are much harder to 

 shoot than squirrels, for they run faster than rabbits 

 and are much bigger." " Well, I declare," he said, 

 and then relapsed into silence, perfectly satisfied that 

 he knew all about it. 



For the information of this Philadelphia merchant 

 I will say that the brant is smaller than a goose, and 

 at this spring-time of year is on his way northward, 

 merrily helped along by hundreds of guns belching 

 forth No. 3 to No. 1 shot from all sorts of innocent 

 looking shooting boxes surrounded with decoys, both 

 artificial and natural. 



It is a bird of beautiful plumage and graceful form ; 

 plump and fat, swift of wing and wary and suspicious 

 of anything and everything that bears the slightest 

 semblance of danger. There is also a mystery sur- 

 rounding it which has bothered the scientists for ages 

 and is still bothering them ; namely, the whereabouts 

 of its breeding habitat. The late Professor Spencer 

 Baird worried himself more, perhaps, than any other 

 savant over this undiscovered territory. No living 

 man, it is said, has ever seen the nest or egg of the 

 brant, and no matter how far explorers have forced 

 their way northward the brant has always been 

 seen winging on still further north. Therefore the 

 Monomoy guides — some of whom have grown gray in 

 the pursuit of " brantin' " — claim that there surely 

 must be an open Polar Sea where the weather is 



