329 RESOURCES OF CALIFOKNIA. 
relled shot-guns. He usually shoots first at the ducks or geese 
while they are in the water, and afterward again and again as 
they rise and fly. Sometimes he goes ashore, to shoot them 
while feeding. The geese spend the night in the water—gen- 
erally in a slough or pond—and rise abéut daybreak, to feed 
in the fields of grain, grass, or wild oats. They remain there 
during a considerable part of the morning, return to spend the 
iniddle of the vay in the water, go back to the fields in the 
afternoon, and at sunset take to the water again for the night. 
The ducks get most of their food in the tules, and are not 
often shot on the land. 
* The ox-shooter stalks his game. He basa trained ox, which 
walks before him and hides him from the geese or ducks until 
within good shooting-distance. The- boat-shooters average 
thirty ducks a day during the season; and a good ox-shooter 
will sometimes kill one hundred and fifty geese in a day. 
Snipe, curlew, and quail, are the game for sportsmen who 
hunt for their amusement, and the modes of hunting them are 
the same as those in the Eastern states. ; 
Hunting is an unimportant interest in California as com~ 
pared with fishing, and must contjnually decrease in impor- 
tance, while the fisheries will increase. 
A game-law probibits the killing of quail, partridge, mallard 
and summer duck, from the lst of March.to the 15th of Sep- 
tember; and elk, deer, and antelope, during the first half of 
the year; and prohibits the selling of the game slain during 
the forbidden season. 
§ 231. House-building.—In the building of houses, the Cali- 
fornians, like Americans generally, are expert and quick. It 
is not uncommon to see a wooden dwelling-house commenced 
and finished within a month. Brick houses are built so fast, 
that the mortar has scarcely time to dry and harden as the 
walls go up. Most of the houses are of wood, and of the kind 
called “ Balloon” or “ Chicago” frames, fastened together with 
nails, without tenons and mortices, and with no upright posts 
thicker than two by four inches. This kind of a frame, called 
