WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 343 
on their very feeding grounds, where most they desire to 
be quiet and unmolested, as in the end, if long persisted 
in, to make them entirely abandon the flats on which it is 
practised, and betake themselves to other and safer local- 
ities. 
For this reason the use of these batteries has been 
generally prohibited by law; but on Long Island, as all 
other statutory provisions for the protection of game, this 
salutary enactment is utterly disregarded, and the birds 
are decimated daily throughout the season, where they 
ought to be the most protected, and are accordingly be- 
coming annually fewer, wilder, and less easy of access. 
On the Jersey waters of Squam Beach, Barnegat, 
greater and lesser Egg Harbor, and other places of equal 
resort by wild fowl, the use of these destructive machines 
is proscribed by public opinion of the gunners themselves ; 
and these men being a bold, hardy, lawless, and some say, 
half-piratical race, half-fowlers, half-fishermen, and more 
than half-wreckers, who are apt to enforce the laws of their 
own enactment by the strong hand and with the aid of their, 
Queen Anne’s muskets and a handful of heavy shot; the 
prohibition of batteries, as also of sail-boats provided with 
swivels, is on the whole enforced with tolerable regularity. 
On the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the law again 
provides against the use of batteries, as also of sail-boats, 
and punts with swivels; but here also it is the strong hand 
of the lawful and sportsmanlike gunners which alone carries 
out and vindicates the operation of the law; and it is not 
without desperate, and at times even bloody affrays, that the 
poachers are prevented from-carrying on their ruinous trade. 
