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Canvas -Back and Terrapin. 



DIVING FOR CEL- 

 ERY. — I. 



lakes. They follow the edge of the winter along the Atlantic coast, 

 and the water they prefer to feed in is that in which ice is about to 

 form or from which it has just disappeared. Nowhere are they so 

 good for the table as in the Chesapeake. Elsewhere 

 they are tough or fishy ; but the great vegetable beds 

 of its shallows, and the quantity of wild celery that 

 they contain, impart to their flesh its greatest delicacy 

 and best flavor. In the matter of variety, they are 

 known as canvas-backs, red-heads, bald-pates, black- 

 heads and mallards. There are numbers of smaller 

 ducks with arbitrary names depending apparently 

 very much upon the locality and its peculiar ornithological bent. In 

 the way of larger birds there are swans and geese. Their numbers 

 are inconceivable, but they are very wild and hard to approach. 

 Both, for the table, are as fine in their way as any game bird that flies. 



There are various ways of shooting 

 the ducks of the Chesapeake and its 

 broad affluent, the Susquehanna. Gen- 

 tlemen for the most part shoot from 

 "blinds" and use decoys; while mar- 

 ket gunners use the "sink-boat" or 

 the "night reflector." "Blinds" are 

 any sort of artificial concealment placed at an advantageous point 

 upon the shore. They generally consist of a seat in a sort of box, 

 or shelter, some four feet deep, and capable of containing three or 

 four persons and a couple of dogs. They are thoroughly covered 

 up with pine branches and young pine-trees and communicate with 

 the shore by a path similarly sheltered. The water in front is com- 

 paratively shallow, and, if it contain beds of wild celery on the 

 bottom, is sure to be a feeding-ground for the ducks. About thirty 

 yards from the "blind" are anchored a fleet of perhaps a hundred 

 and fifty decoys. They are wooden ducks roughly carved and 

 painted, but devised with a strict regard for variety and sex. At a 

 little distance they are calculated to deceive any eye, and they cer- 

 tainly have a great deal of weight in determining the action of a 

 passing flock, or "bunch," of ducks. The sink-boat is in reality a 

 floating blind. It is nothing more than an anchored box, or coffin, 

 with hinged flaps to keep the water from invading it. The gunner 



DIVING FOR CELERY.- 



