THE CURSE OF AMERICA X SHOOTIXC. 



109 



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there are not a few of such homesteads. From the 

 so-called barn, we gained the corn cribs, and from 

 there the fence, and under the shelter of its weed- 

 covered rails ultimately reached the field before 

 spoken of. 



It was jus. such a piece of spoilt cultivation as 

 must give its owner a spasm every time he views it, 

 for before him lay a cruel, cruel evid('nce of wasted 

 labour, and the unkind treatment of a wet season. 

 Not three cornhills in a dozen had produced grain, 

 and that was stunted and blighted, so hogs had been 

 turned into it, to do the *' root, hog, or die " business. 

 These beasts, swine like,, had tramped the whole 

 place, except the centre, where the slough was, into a 

 cesspool, in the slime and filth of which still was to 

 be found some grain, and the wildfowl were not slow 

 to discover this godsend ; moreover, burrs and other 

 rapidly-growing plants had sprung up everywhere in 

 most luxuriant growth, affording a haven of shelter 

 from the glaring noonday sun, and a hiding-place 

 from the numerous eagle-eyed hawks that are ever 

 the close attendants upon the flocks of the different 

 varieties and species of the duck family. 



Mark and myself had little difficulty in gaining 

 the unprofitable cornfield, and, further still, the 

 vicinity of the water, but we both suffered more than 

 inconvenience — nay, positive torture — in our exertion 

 to do so, for the burrs — the most detestable produc- 

 tion of the vegetable creation — ' ' nost bound our legs 

 together, scratching and rasping our skins whenever 

 we made a movement of our limbs. They are of two 

 sorts, the cuckle burr and the louse burr. The first, 

 from its size, is the most to be dreaded, but the other 

 means to be equally objectionable, if it had only the 

 power. They are a curse to American shooting till 

 cut down by the frosts, and even after severe weather 

 they do not become thoroughly exterminated. If 

 man suffers from these abominable seed pods adher- 





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