!<J THE WILD-FOWLER. 



It is one of the most ancient, as well as the most natural, arts 

 known to mankind ; and in every nation has called forth the earliest 

 cunning of the people. There are frequent allusions to it in the 

 Scriptures : more particularly in the Old Testament, as to the " snares 

 of the fowler j" and there can be no doubt but such were used many 

 centuries before Christ. 



As different species of birds have different habits, so the method of 

 taking them differs, in accordance with such habits. Such portions of 

 the art as relate to the capture of wild- fowl and fen-birds, are by far 

 the most attractive, varied, and extensive : and, to those particular 

 branches, our discourse will be more especially devoted. 



It is a pleasant and useful diversion, abounding with varieties as 

 attractive and instructive as they are exciting and exhilarating.* 



There is no branch of the art of fowling possessing so great an 

 amount of attraction, or requiring such consummate skill, as is ne- 

 cessary for proficiency in the art of capturing water- fowl 5 and, besides, 

 there is no one which offers so many examples of instinct. 



It appears, however, to have been a sport distasteful (because, pro- 

 bably, very imperfectly understood) to that earliest of writers upon 

 sporting-literature Dame Juliana Barnes, alias Berners. That anti- 

 quated and distinguished sportswoman, draws a very forlorn and 

 miserable picture of an ancient fowler ; showing him up, in her pecu- 

 liar style of language, as the very object of pity, disappointment, and 

 misery ;f but her remarks can only be read as applying to taking 

 birds with nets, gins, and such like contrivances other portions of 

 her work being dissertations specially in praise of 'hawking, as a 

 distinct branch of the pursuit ; and in which she appears to have been 

 a proficient, and evidently familiar with the art of capturing wild-fowl 

 with rapacious birds. 



Both ancient and modern fowlers agree as to the necessity of 

 knowing something of the haunts as well as the habits of wild-fowl, 

 before success can be confidently looked for in any branch of the pursuit. 



* Burton, in his " Anatomy of Melancholy," speaking of " Exercise rectified," 

 says : " Fowling is more troublesome, but all on't as delightsome to some sorts of 

 men, be it with guns, lime, nets, glades, ginnes, strings, baits, pitfalls, pipes, calls, 

 stalking-horses, setting dogs, coy-ducks, &c., or otherwise." 



f " The dysporte and game of fowlynge me semyth moost symple, for in the 

 wynter season the fowler spedyth not but in the most hardest and coldest weder ; 

 whyche is greuous. For when he wolde goo to his gynnes he maye not for colde. 

 Many a gynne and many a snare he makyth, yet soryly dooth he fare. At morn 

 tyde in the dewe he is weete shote vnto hia taylle." The Bolce of St. Albans ; by 

 Juliana Barnes : A.D. 1496. 



