CHAPTER XIV. 



THE CANVAS-BACK DUCK. 



THE Canvas-Back, while the best known of the nu- 

 merous varieties of duck in certain localities, in others 

 are comparatively strangers. In the East, in and around 

 Chesapeake Bay, they have been known from the ear- 

 liest recollection of the inhabitants. Their habits, their 

 feeding grounds, their places of resort, the various de- 

 vices and means to effect their capture, whether by 

 tolingr the captor benefiting by the inquisitiveness of 

 the bird, the bringing them down in point shooting, 

 the shooting them over decoys, from sink boxes, killing 

 them from sailing boats, or the destructive way of 

 slaughtering them during the night by poachers with 

 enormous swivel guns, lashed to strong boats, burning 

 heavy charges of powder and hurling with murderous 

 effect the leaden hail into the sleeping ranks of the un- 

 suspecting birds, killing scores of them at one discharge 



