Sweden. 35 



bays or inlets, choked with bulrashes and reeds, edged with low, 

 swampy, undrained, sedgy meadow flats, the wildfowl shooter in 

 Uie autumn, if he only understood his business, could reap a good 

 harvest here, even at the price that wild ducks fetch (under one 

 shilling per couple) ; and as for snipe-shooting, I do not believe the 

 far-famed bogs of Ireland can beat (in a good season) some of these 

 marshy meadows in September. No one here cares a pin for killing 

 a snipe 3 but, unfortunately, every duck-shooter goes for the "pot" not 

 for the sport 3 and as the duck season commences in July, the young- 

 birds are cleared off by "family shots" before they are more than 

 half-grown — in fact, as soon as they can rise above the rushes, most 

 of the sportsmen here shut up duck-shooting. But then for a few 

 weeks a man who can shoot may get some rattling sport, if he has 

 only a good fellow to sprit his punt quietly through the reeds. I 

 have more than once known twelve couple of full-grown ducks 

 killed in one morning's shooting as they rose snugly from a patch of 

 reeds of no great extent ; and although about fifteen couple of snipe 

 is the most I have ever myself bagged in a day, I am certain I have 

 been out some days here when two good men might have picked 

 up their fifty couple and been home to an early dinner. And the 

 reader will bear in mind that this is on unpreser\''ed ground, where 

 a stranger who has not the character of a pot-hunter, has only to ask 

 leave, and obtain permission to shoot. But by November all the 

 sport with a shoulder-gun is over. The snipes have left, the 

 ducks are packed and as wild as hawks ; they leave the rushes, and 

 congregate in the open waters by hundreds — wild-duck, widgeon, 

 teal, golden-eye, all mixed ; sailing about in perfect security, well 

 out of gun-shot. Now would be the time for a punt-gun — a thing 

 that never was seen on these waters. 



The only ducks that commonly bred round the Wenern, to my 

 knowledge, were the common wild duck {Anas boschas, L., as they 

 are called here, the grass-duck), the widgeon (A. Penelope, L.), 

 and the teal {A. crecca, L.) The golden eye {A. cLangula, L.) breeds 

 in holes of trees in the forests on the north-east of the Wenern, and 

 the goosander {Mergus merganser^ L.), and the merganser {M. 



D 2 



