THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 197 
hundred shots, a hundred volleys, is consigned to the 
care of some conductor, by him to be ‘delivered to Del- 
monico or Florence, for the benefit of fat, greasy 
merchant-princes; and if it were not so, if birds, 
swarmed as of yore in every reedy slank, by every alder- 
brake, in every willow tuft, the ground is haunted by 
too many recollections, rife with too nfany thick-suc- 
ceeding memories to render it a fitting place, to me at 
least, for pleasurable or gay pursuits. 
But, as I have said before, summer cock-shooting on 
the Drowned Lands of Orange County is among the 
things that have been—one of the stars that have set, 
never to be relumed, in the nineteenth century ; and the 
glory of {the Warwick Woodlands” has departed. 
In Connecticut, in some parts, there is very good 
summer cock-shooting yet; and also in many places in 
the neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the rich alluvial 
levels around the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and their 
tributary rivers ; but the sportsman, who really thirsts for 
fine shooting—shooting such as it does the heart good to 
hear of—must mount the iron-horse, whose breath is the 
hissing steam, and away, fleeter even than the wings of 
the morning, for Michigan and Llinois and Indiana, for 
the willow-brakes of Alganac, and the rice-marshes ot 
Lake St. Clair; and there he may shoot cock till his 
gun-barrels are red-hot, and his heart is satiate of bird- 
slaughter. 
It is usual at this season to shoot cock over pointers or 
