NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 149 
not particular how they proceed so long as the fowl are secured 
for the market. Hardly less objectionable is the mode of netting 
black ducks (Scoters and Scaups) which is said to be employed 
by the fishermen at Cape Grisnez; although, as in the former 
case, it has a certain amount of attraction for those who see it 
practised for the first time. It consists in driving into the sands 
at low-water a number of stakes enclosing a pretty large 
parallelogram of ground covered as much as_ possible with 
mussels and other shell-fish. To the tops of these stakes a net 
is fixed in such a manner as to have its flat surface parallel with 
and about two feet from the bottom. At high-tide this net is 
covered, and the black ducks, which come shoreward for the 
shallower water where they can reach food, on diving down for 
it, became entangled in the meshes of the net and are drowned. 
A longer and narrower net set up edgewise, as for fish, and 
forming a sort of semicircle beyond the flat net, prevents any 
dead birds that may be washed off the flat net by the action of 
the tide from floating out to sea. In this manner a score of 
ducks have been taken at a time. The device, however, is not 
anewone. The late Mr. Lloyd, in his ‘ Game-birds- and Wild- 
fowl of Sweden and Norway’ (pp. 867, 368), describes a some- 
what similar mode of netting wildfowl; and Mr. J. H. Gurney, 
Jun., in his ‘Rambles of a Naturalist,’ has a chapter entitled 
‘* Netting Sea-birds on the Wash.” Many of our readers will no 
doubt recollect also Mr: Stevenson’s remarks on this subject in 
the second volume of his ‘ Birds of Norfolk’ (pp. 376, 377). 
Perhaps the most extraordinary capture of wild ducks in a 
net is that related by Daniel in the Supplement to his ‘ Rural 
Sports’ (p. 627). A fisherman near Drumburgh placed a flounder- 
' net in the river Eden, which is subject to the flux and reflux of 
the tide, and on his returning to take up his net, instead of 
finding fish, he found it loaded with wild ducks. During his 
absence a “fleet” of these birds had alighted below the net, and, 
on the flowing of the tide, were carried, from the contraction of 
the channel, with great impetuosity into the net and drowned. 
He caught one hundred and seventy Golden-eyes ! 
Amongst other chapters in the present volumes, which we 
doubt not will possess an interest for many readers, may be 
mentioned—‘‘ Twirling for Larks on the Continent,” and ‘ Boar 
and Wolf-hunting in France.’ It would not be easy, however, to 
