8 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



varieties of Curlew, Sandpiper, Plover, Godwit, or Phalarope, 

 sometimes as passing visitors, sometimes as denizens and owners 

 of the soil, on which they build their nests, and raise their am- 

 phibious young. 



The greater portion of these winter on the shores of the South- 

 em S.ates, and many in countries yet to the south of these, and 

 during the spring and summer, pass eastward and northward 

 along the coasts of the Atlantic, to their breeding places in the 

 extreme North, on the cold shores of Labrador, returning thence 

 in autumn to the milder climates of Florida, and the warm 

 waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 



The great tract of shallow, land-locked water, which lies 

 along almost the whole southern side of Long Island, impro- 

 perly called the Great South Bay, for it is rather a lagoon than 

 a bay, " occupying a distance of seventy miles uninterrupted in- 

 land navigation," bounded on the south by the shingle beach 

 and sand hills, which divide it from the open Atlantic, and on 

 the north by the vast range of salt meadows, which form the 

 margin of the island, is the resort of countless flocks of aquatic 

 fowl of every description, and is especially the paradise of gun- 

 ners. The marshy shores of South-western Jersey, the broad 

 embouchure of the Delaware, the many beautiful streams which 

 flow together into the Bay of the Chesapeake, the inlets of Albe- 

 marle and Pamlico Sounds, the tepid waters of Florida, the 

 great bay of Mobile, and the sea-lakes Borgne and Pontchar- 

 train, at the mouths of the Mississippi, all abound in their season 

 with these aquatic myriads ; but in none, perchance, are they 

 more systematically and regulai'ly pursued, than in the waters 

 of Lono^ Island. The mode of pursuing and taking them, is 

 nearly the same everywhere, as they, like all species of wild 

 fowl, must be taken by stratagem, and from ambush, not by 

 open pursuit. 



The tribes and varieties of the>e birds are so numerous, that 

 to attempt a detailed account or description of them all, would 

 far exceed the possible limits of such a work as this, and would 

 cause it to assume the character, to which it does not aspire, of 



