218 MANUAL FOR TOTING SPOKTSMEN. 



Of this species of dog, or way of using it, there is no 

 trace on the uplands of America, or elsewhere, save on 

 the salt waters of the estuaries and tide rivers, whose half- 

 frozen waters swarm in winter with myriads of the choicest 

 wild fowl, the canvas-back, the red-head, the scaup, or 

 broadbill, as it is commonly called by American gunners, 

 and the widgeon, or baldpate, not to enumerate wild geese, 

 brant, and the king of waterfowl, the superb, incomparable 

 swan. 



The usual, and among gentlemen sportsmen, who shoot 

 for pleasure, not for base profit, the only legitimate way of 

 shooting these delicious wild-fowl, is by lying in ambush 

 for them behind screens or blinds of rushes made for the 

 purpose, on points of islands, headlands, river mouths and 

 the like, over which the fowl fly, in going to or returning 

 from their feeding grounds, when they may be shot, by 

 clever gunners, with heavy pieces and large shot, at great 

 ranges and with great sport. 



To shoot from batteries moored on their feeding 

 grounds, and still more to sail in upon them when feed- 

 ing, is properly discountenanced and esteemed unsports- 

 manlike and infamous, since it causes the birds, which will 

 not endure to be disturbed and slaughtered while on iheir 

 feed, to collect into great flocks, soar up into the air, and 

 entirely abandon the places where they are thus perse- 

 cuted. 



The flocks of ducks are, it is true, at times toled. in, 

 as it is called, by the assistance of small curs, trained to 

 play, running to and fro along the margin of the rivers, 

 where th ducks are swimming or feeding, when, strange 



