BY INLAND WATERS 109 



From this duck's gullet and gizzard he took a few- 

 pebbles, snail shells, a little chaff, and 23,774 weed 

 seeds — 13,240 pigweed seeds, 7,264 knot grass, 576 

 dock, and 2,624 ragweed. As ragweed is popularly- 

 supposed to be the worst of all dangers to hay- 

 fever sufferers, the hay-fever convention should cer- 

 tainly sit beneath a stuffed black duck, even as 

 the Great and General Court of Massachusetts 

 meets beneath a golden codfish! It is not, I fancy, 

 generally realized that ducks consume so many 

 seeds — for that matter, it isn't generally realized 

 how large a part all beneficent birds play in holding 

 the destructive exuberance of nature in check. The 

 terrible and disgusting slaughter of our wild duck, 

 especially by wealthy Northern hunters in the 

 South in winter, is a blot on our national good sense. 

 I knew of three New York men, one of them the 

 owner of a house-boat, who went to the Carolinas 

 two winters ago, and in a week slaughtered three 

 hundred ducks. And they were all three estimable 

 citizens and kind fathers, and could see no reason 

 why they shouldn't be proud of what they had done. 

 For me, I can only hope that they all breathe rag- 

 weed pollen and sniffle with hay-fever to the end of 

 their days! 



I never heard of anybody trying to eat a great 

 blue heron, nor, in the parts of New England where 

 I have lived or spent my summers, have I ever seen 

 anybody so lost to beauty and kindliness as to 

 shoot one. Yet they, too, like so much else that is 

 wild and dependent on wilderness conditions, are 

 growing fewer. This great, long-legged, decora- 

 tive bird, with its suggestion always of a Japanese 



