TEE DUCKS. 209 



a water channel that leads off the water into the adjacent 

 country. After dark, when the ducks are floating about in 

 the careless security of sleep, the trappers enter the hut, and 

 opening a sluice gate, strike a light inside their watch-tower, 

 and await the arrival of the ducks, which are soon carried, 

 by the newly produced current into the channel over which 

 the hut is built. They enter through a narrow opening, 

 and are seized with ready hands, and made lawful food by 

 having their throats cut. In this manner a couple of men 

 can easily secure from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 ducks in a single night. 



Not more than a month or two ago, the Sporting and 

 Dramatic News had some sketches showing a common Indian 

 trapper's dodge. They prepare a number of calabashes, from 

 rind of the melon or gourd, and keep them floating up and 

 down the lakes, on which swarm innumerable quantities of 

 wild duck. From habit, the birds soon come to take no 

 notice of the calabashes. The Indian, observing this, then 

 prepares a calabash in which he cuts holes for seeing and 

 breathing, and places it over his head. With this, and a belt 

 round his waist, he starts on his duck-catching expedition. 

 He is almost as used to the water as the prey he is in quest 

 of, easily stealing quietly towards the flock, and when 

 within an arm's length of a duck catching it by the legs, 

 and before it has time to utter a solitary " quack " he whips 

 it under the surface, and hangs it to the belt, very speedily 

 filled in this manner. Our journal, unless I am mistaken, 

 mentioned this practice as being in vogue in Yorkshire ; and 

 in fact it is curiously widespread. 



On one part of the American coast there is a similar 

 expedient practised, only that in this instance the headpiece 

 is a cap of rushes a number of them being always left 

 floating about on the surface of the water to accustom the 

 fowl to the objects, otherwise the process of capture is just 

 the same as that detailed above. 



It is also known in China, and Mr. Thomas Wise asserts, 



p 



