310 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Activity of inexperienced fowlers. 



themselves when they go to work : otherwise, 

 they say, there is no other great danger in it, 

 except that it is a toilsome and artificial la- 

 bour; for he that hath not learned to be so let 

 down, and is not used thereto, is turned about 

 with the rope, so that he soon groweth giddy, 

 and can do nothing; but he that hath learned 

 the art, considers it as a sport, swings himself on 

 the rope, sets his feet against the rock, casts him- 

 self some fathoms from thence, and shoots him- 

 self to what place he will ; he knows where the 

 birds are, he understands how to sit on the line 

 in the air, and how to hold the fowling-staff ia 

 his hand ; striking therewith the birds that come 

 or fly away : and when there are holes in the 

 rocks, and it stretches itself out, making under- 

 neath as a ceiling, under which the birds are, he 

 knoweth how to shoot himself in among them, 

 and there take firm footing. There, when he is 

 in these holes, he maketh himself loose of the 

 rope, which he fastens to the crag of the rock, 

 that it may not slip from him to the outside of 

 the cliff. He then goes about in the rock, tak- 

 ing the fowl, either with his hands or with the 

 fowling-staff. Thus, when he hath killed as 

 many birds as he thinks fit, he ties them in a 

 bundle, and fastens them to a little rope, giving 

 a sign, by pulling, that they should draw them 

 up. When he has wrought thus the whole day, 

 and desires to get up again, he sitteth once more 

 upon the great rope, giving a new sign that they 



