198 
THE SHELDBAKE. 
tire same way, and so on, till he has collected as 
many as he can conveniently carry, attached to a 
belt round his middle, and then he slowly retires, 
leaving the floating calabashes amongst the Ducks. 
On another part of the coast the same expedient is 
practised, excepting that, instead of a calabash, they 
use a sort of cap made of rushes, similar caps being 
left to float amongst the flocks of Ducks, to which 
they soon get as much accustomed as those we 
first mentioned do to the calabashes. 
The Sheldrakes, which, as we have seen, build in 
rabbit-burrows, are caught by snares placed before 
the hole, into which the birds are traced by the 
marks of their feet on the sand. In this country, 
our markets are supplied either by those who are 
in the habit of shooting them, as a livelihood during 
the winter season, or from decoys, in which by far 
the greater number are taken. In shooting, the 
great difficulty is to get within gun-shot, the Duck 
not only being very watchful and timid, but pos- 
sessed of so fine a sense of smelling, that but for 
the precaution of approaching them to leeward, or 
of holding a piece of smoking turf in the hand, it 
is no easy matter to get within reasonable distance. 
The guns, also, which are employed for this pur- 
pose, are much longer than those in common use, 
and will kill at a much greater distance. A Duck- 
shooter's life is often exposed to great hazard ; the 
sport, if so it may be called, being carried on usually 
in Winter, late in the evening, or early in the morn- 
ing, and most frequently in wet and marshy places, or 
on the shores of wild and solitary estuaries, opening 
through the lowlands near the sea. On these occa- 
