344 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
In those waters, however, the shores for the most part 
belonging to comparatively few and wealthy proprietors, 
the points and islands being, as I have observed, ordinarily 
rented by clubs of sportsmen, and the excellence and 
actual value of the game being of sufficient importance to 
render its protection an object, the laws are rigidly en- 
forced, preservation is effected, and notwithstanding the 
countless multitudes which are yearly destroyed, they do 
not appear very materially to decrease in number. 
The other mode, described above, of shooting from 
boats moored among the hassocks in the bays, is not liable 
to this objection, as the birds are shot, not while in the 
act of feeding, but always on the wing, as they are passing 
up and down from one flat to another, accordingly as this 
is submerged too deeply, or that left wholly bare, by the 
rising or falling of the tide. 
This, it seems, does not molest or disturb them to such 
a degree as to cause their abandonment of the neighbor- 
hood, and only operates so far as to render them shy 
and fearful of the points whence they are peppered, 
causing them to fly down the middle of the bays and 
channels, without passing over the land, if they can 
avoid it. 
This it is which gives scope to all the gunner’s ingenu- 
ity, both in the selection of his points in reference to the 
wind which may be blowing, and his knowledge of the 
feeding grounds, in order that the fowl, as they are driven 
up from the outer beaches by the rising tides to the inner 
marshes, may be jammed down by stress of weather upon 
the station which he has chosen; and in imitating the 
