158 THE MALLARD. 
by wild water-fowl which he adroitly pulls under water without 
in the slightest disturbing the rest. Sometimes, we were told, 
he drags with him a piece of double rope, twisted, with a stone 
or weight fastened to it; each bird as it is caught has the neck 
thrust between the twists of the rope, and thus as many as 
twenty will be captured ata single trip ; some have a light cord 
fastened round the loins, between which and their bodies they 
thrust the neck ; in either case they kill the duck almost instanta- 
neously by a sharp twist of the neck. I never myself saw the 
ducks thus caught, but a man put on the Pelican helmet and 
made it sail about before me in such wise that, even when quite 
close, it was difficult to believe that it was not a living bird.” 
In every case the object is to use something which the birds 
are accustomed to see moving about harmlessly amongst them, 
and for this purpose, where earthen pots, gourds, &c., are used, 
a number of these, precisely similar to the one used, are turned 
adrift in the water a week at least before catching commences, 
and kept afloat all the season. It is usual, too, in order to 
facilitate captures, to throw grain daily on the water in a 
particular spot, where the fowler can most easily work so 
as toensure his being able to find birds where there are no 
dangerous holes and where the water is neither too deep 
nor too shallow. 
Of course a great deal of practice is necessary. Gourds and 
the like, impelled by the wind, only move in acertain, slow, 
deliberate manner, and this must be exactly imitated. Any 
abnormal movement of the helmet would at once excite sus- 
picion, and cause the fowl to disperse. It is difficult too so 
to pull the birds under, that their fellows do not notice their 
disappearance. The retreat must be as careful as the advance, 
and the man, both in getting into and out of the water, must 
be effectually concealed from view. 
Large numbers are captured in this way. One man, a Maho- 
medan-Bengali, told me that, visiting four tanks on successive 
days, he caught one day, with another, about a dozen ducks daily 
throughout the season, and he caught before me every one of a 
party of seven Gadwall, and that although the last two were ob- 
viously getting suspicious, probably on account of the disappear- 
ance Of their comrades. I have tried this plan myself two or 
three times, but the cold is trying, and moving as slowly as one 
has to do, the work is most wearisome; azd I only once suc- 
ceeded in capturing a duck (an old Shoveller), and that made 
such a fuss going under, that it put upall the other fowl, so I 
very soon gave up the personal practice of this system. 
Not so the second plan of the standing net which I worked for 
years. You make nets of moderately thick English twine, two inch 
meshes, in pieces, fourteen feet wide, and a hundred yards long. 
You have, perhaps, six such pieces, and you use one, two, four 
six, as yourequire. A thin English cord is run through the upper 
