218 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
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 their 
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 foled 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 the ducks are swimming or feeding, when, strange 
