410 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept, io, 1910. 
through hath that I had no bother at all with the 
officials. People say that the Portuguese officials 
cause you a lot of trouble and bother, but with 
this I do not agree. If you use them with a 
little tact, everything is easy; but with people 
like these, a little politeness goes a very long 
way. Always agree with them, and consider that 
whatever they do is right. It costs nothing and 
saves you a good deal. 
I had a large amount of correspondence wait¬ 
ing for me, and, as usual, found some of it far 
from pleasant, and I found it was high time that 
I had returned, as my presence was absolutely 
necessary in England on business, and they had 
been searching far and wide for me for eight 
months. I also heard of the death of one of my 
greatest friends—he was my very best friend— 
killed in the Congo by an elephant. It was what 
I always thought would happen to him. Pie was 
too brave and venturesome, but this-did not make 
the news less sad. He had been away over six¬ 
teen months on his trip, and I was to have gone 
with him, but was prevented at the last moment. 
His trip was purely a business venture, princi¬ 
pally for ivory. I was very much cut up and 
broke down that night, and was threatened with 
a dose of fever. Luckily, the boat turned up on 
time, and I was able to get on board, taking Eli 
with me, and when we arrived at Mombasa, I 
dropped him, and right sorry I was to say good¬ 
bye. Eli had a black skin, but a much larger 
and whiter heart than a great many white men, 
and I believe he was really sorry to say good-bye 
to me. Pie begged me to take him on to Eng¬ 
land, but this was too tall an order for me. I 
rewarded him well, and know where to lay my 
hands on him should I again go out to that 
country. 
A couple of weeks of sea air soon put new 
life into me, and I began to feel again quite fit. 
I had made a long trip, had had excellent sport 
and escaped all dangers; but I had come back, not 
poorer than I started, but without that bag of 
gold which I had so fondly hoped to bring with 
me. 
Wildfowl on the Farm.—V. 
A difficulty much spoken of by Captain Oates 
is a tendency of the young wild ducks to get 
their down, especially their heads, necks and 
backs dirty from the accumulation of food. Wet 
meal if of course sticky, the ducklings are 
greedy and careless and get more or less of it 
on their heads and necks, from which it is trans¬ 
ferred to their back, and when dried on the 
down it becomes a mat which causes disease of 
the skin and often of the eyes. To get rid of 
this trouble he recommends washing the ducks 
with soap and warm water, a labor which, of 
course, could not be performed if there were 
many ducks to be treated. A better plan would 
seem to be not to give the ducks their food in 
such a condition that they get it on their plum¬ 
age in this way. By seeing that the food is fed 
to them in a more or less dried condition instead 
of being almost liquid,.they will get but little of 
it on the down, and what they do annex will for 
the most part be cleaned off by their own bills. 
Before the young ducks are allowed to go to 
the water they should be fairly large and strong 
and have some feathers on wings and back. 
When they are about six or seven weeks old, 
however, they may be permitted to go to the 
water, and from that time on may spend a por¬ 
tion of each day there. If, however, they are 
left perfectly free to wander at their own sweet 
will over a body of water or along a brook, they 
will be exposed to many dangers, which cannot 
be guarded against. It is better, therefore, to 
temporarily fence off with wire netting a com¬ 
paratively small area of the shore of the pond, 
or a small section of the brook and let the birds 
do their bathing in that. The first bath should 
not last too long, and if practicable it is very 
well to take the coops of the old birds down to 
the water's edge and let the young ones take 
their first swim under the parental eye. The 
danger to the young brood is somewhat reduced 
if the water is within a piece of woods or is 
well bordered at the edge by overhanging wil¬ 
lows. This will keep off winged enemies, which, 
however, the man who is present in charge of 
the young birds, should be able to shoot if they 
appear. 
Not very long after the birds have become 
accustomed to the water they may be allowed 
their liberty. The tendency of old and young 
will then be to form into little companies which 
will go off together in search of food, and by 
this time it will be safe to remove the wire net¬ 
ting which was put down at first to keep the 
young birds from wandering. They are now 
large enough to recognize the presence of 
enemies and to have an idea what to do to 
escape from them. From this time forth the 
young birds require but little watching. Their 
water, and a portion of their food they provide 
themselves, but they must still be trained to 
come to a certain place at fixed hours of the day, 
where they should be offered grain, ground dried 
meat and chopped green food. 
It should now be mid-summer and a time 
when the young birds must be especially pro¬ 
tected from the attacks of natural enemies. The 
woods may be full of young hawks and the vari¬ 
ous carnivorous animals have increased in num¬ 
ber by the litters born during the past spring. 
It is important that the man who has charge of 
the ducks should carry his gun constantly with 
him, should have traps set everywhere and should 
always be prepared to set some more. By this 
time the young ducks are wholly feathered, and 
those which have not been pinioned are able to 
use their wings and no doubt do use them to 
some extent, making short excursions to neigh¬ 
boring waters, but returning always at feeding 
time and to spend the night on what they regard 
as their home. 
When the autumn migration begins, these birds 
that are making excursions from home will often 
bring with them on their return wild migrants 
which in time become so tame as to share the 
food and the roosting place of the home-reared 
birds. Such a condition of things is very satis¬ 
factory to the duck breeder, for he may feel 
reasonably sure that the next season some of 
these wild birds will return and will take up 
their abode within his inclosure and there rear 
their young, supplying fresh blood for his flock. 
When the shooting season opens, there will 
no doubt be some destruction of his home¬ 
reared birds, notwithstanding all efforts by the 
owner. It is altogether probable that many of 
his neighbors will have been sufficiently obser¬ 
vant to see where the birds go on their journeys 
away from home and how they return, and peo¬ 
ple may station themselves in the line of flight 
and may kill a few or a good many. This is a 
loss that must be borne. We assume that the 
duck breeder is not attempting to rear birds for 
a money profit, but for the interest he feels in 
the work, and after getting some little shooting 
himself, he will not grudge the same to his 
neighbors. A good arrangement in regard to 
such a matter would be for the landowner to 
invite his neighbors, say once a week, to join 
with him in having shooting from certain stands, 
and by doing this he could very likely limit the 
shooting to once a week, which would cut it 
down to five or six days for the season under 
ordinary weather conditions in the Northern 
States. The loss of birds caused by this shoot¬ 
ing is likely to be more than made up by the 
wild birds that would return next spring. 
It has been noticed that in the shooting sea¬ 
sons of 1908 and 1909 certain of the more 
familiar ducks, as the black duck and mallard 
were apparently more abundant than for many 
years past. This by many is attributed to the 
stopping of spring shooting over a considerable 
portion of the country where these birds breed. 
This shortening of the season has not only re¬ 
duced the number of birds killed annually, but 
has enabled certain species to return and com¬ 
mence to reoccupy the breeding grounds which 
were theirs until they were driven away by the 
pursuit of-the man with the shotgun. 
At best, the breeding grounds of the wild 
ducks have^ been enormously reduced by the 
occupation of the United States and Canada. 
Lakes and ponds and sloughs and marshes and 
swamps, which once furnished breeding grounds 
for wildfowl, have been drained, cleared and put 
under the plow. The birds that used to occupy 
them have in part been killed and in part been 
obliged to move on. Nevertheless, there are still 
