THE AMEEICAN WOODCOCK. 197 



hundred shots, a hundred volleys, is consigned to the 

 care of some conductor, by him to be delivered to Del- 

 monico or Florence, for the benefit of fat, greasy 

 merchant-princes ; and if it were not so, if birds, 

 swarmed as of yore in every reedy slank, by every alder- 

 brake, in every willow tuft, the ground is haunted by 

 too many recollections, rife with too many thick-suc- 

 ceeding memories to render it a fitting place, to me at 

 least, for pleasurable or gay pursuits. 



But, as I have said before, summer cock-shooting on 

 the Drowned Lands of Orange County is among the 

 things that have been one of the stars that have set, 

 never to be relumed, in the nineteenth century ; and the 

 glory of " the Warwick Woodlands" has departed. 



In Connecticut, in some parts, there is very good 

 summer cock-shooting yet ; and also in many places in 

 the neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the rich alluvial 

 levels around the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and their 

 tributary rivers ; but the sportsman, who really thirsts for 

 fine shooting shooting such as it does the heart good to 

 hear of must mount the iron-horse, whose breath is the 

 hissing steam, and away, fleeter even than the wings of 

 the morning, for Michigan and Illinois and Indiana, for 

 the willow-brakes of Alganac, and the rice-marshes of 

 Lake St. Clair ; and there he may shoot cock till his 

 gun-barrels are red-hot, and his heart is satiate of bird- 

 slaughter. 



It is usual at this season to shoot cock over pointers or 



