WILD-FOWLING IN AMERICA. 371 



there are lakes or moist feeding grounds to which they can resort for 

 food and shelter.* 



In Canada there are myriads of wild-fowl in favourable seasons ; 

 more particularly in the neighbourhood of the Champlain Lake, which 

 is frequented by wonderful numbers of water-fowl of every species. 

 The fowlers there make huts, on and near the water, with branches 

 of trees j placing- stuffed decoy birds about the spot they wish the 

 wild ones to resort to. When the latter alight, the fowlers shoot 

 them ; and sometimes they shoot at them as they fly, if they approach 

 within range : after which the natives get into their canoes and 

 gather them up. 



Excellent sport may sometimes be had by proceeding on moon- 

 light nights in a small canoe ; when, by gliding noiselessly among the 

 islets of the lake, the birds may be suddenly surprised within 

 easy range of a shoulder-piece. The fowlers have also a method of 

 catching them in nets, which they spread upon the surface of the 

 water at the entrance to some of the rivers. Wild fowl have been 

 found so abundant in the vicinity of the Champlain lake that one 

 traveller states, " In a word, we ate nothing but water-fowl for 

 fifteen days."f 



They also breed in large numbers on the small uninhabited islands 

 of the Gulf of Mexico ; though their nests are often plundered by 

 persons who go in quest of their eggs in boats ; and who frequently 

 return with two or thiee bushels the result of a few hours' 

 work. 



Wild ducks, canvas-backs and others, arrive in the Susquehanna 

 about the first week in October, and they remain somewhere in the 

 neighbourhood of the Chesapeake until the middle of the following 

 March. 



TOLINO WILD-FOWL. 



There is one system of fowling practised in America which is as 

 curious in performance as it is interesting : it is, probably, one of 



* "In every region of the United States, from the rock-girdled, pine-embosomed 

 lakelets of Maine and the Eastern States, to the limestone pools of the Pennsylva- 

 nian Alleghanies, to the limpid basins set in the oak-openings of Michigan and 

 Illinois, to the gleaming waters that lie unsheltered from the sun's brightest beams 

 in the centre of boundless prairies, all of which, in their proper seasons, are absolutely 

 alive with wild-fowl of every description." Herbert's Field Sports. 



f Vide " Travels in Canada ;" by the Baron Lahontan. 



