the number of Cock on a given day. But the event would depend not only upon the skill, coolness, and good dog of the performer, but upon the length and strength of legs, and all the ordinary capacities of a foot-racer. He who walks three miles, and kills eighteen birds out of twenty, in four hours, and comes home before noon, is entitled to the palm in preference to the painful toiler, who tramps all day and blunders down fifty wingtips, missing at every other shot. Nevertheless, we have been in the solemn woods all day, and have dallied with solitary nature, until dusky evening whispered in our ear, to skip and jump down the rough oxcart precipices, called roads, and when sombre clouds and interwoven branches of tall trees shut out even the light of the flashing torch of the lightning, except when once it shivered, ten yards before us, an enormous oak, to whose hypocritical welcome of towery leaves we were hastening for protection from the beginning hail storm, and when the thunderbolt that burst upon the stricken giant, stunned our fearful ears, and threw us trembling back upon a sharp rock which quivered in its tottering tenancy of the edge of a deep ravine, and then plunged down the precipice, leaving us clinging and climbing with desperate strength upon the uncertain sand and crumbling clay. Bear witness, ye mountains of Haverstraw! Did not the storm scream, and the trees groan, and the cataracts of mixed hail-stones and torrent rain-water sweep down the hill side? Did we not imbibe a hot brandy sling when we ar. rived at Job's, and put on a dry shirt and go to bed?-But, were we beating for birds all day? No, n no. Eleven o'clock, A. M., found us, not weary but languid, by a leaping stream, clear and pure as our Mary's eyes, and of a similar color; and we took out our smitten prey, and smoothed their feathers down, and arranged them in a row, and looked at them, and. thought of death and graves, and then we dipped into the musical water and lipped Castalian glories, and laved our hot brow, and then fell into a cool resting-place upon some short sweet grass by the side of a hazel bush, and took from our pocket Thompson's "Seasons," and read, and fell asleep, dreaming of the beautiful Musidora. Musidora cost us a wet jacket, and a heavy cold. Nothing but thunder could have awakened us from that dream. We seem to hear even now the murmuration of that rivulet, and a woodcock getting up by its side. We are off. Reader, farewell. COLLINEOMANIA. NO. IV. DUCK SHOOTING. "Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, WE wonder if the Poet ever got any answer to that question. We will bet a bag of buckshot, that the water-fowl to whom the interesting interrogatory was addressed, was out of sight, and out of the sound of its echo, before the spoken sentimentality ran up against a mark of interrogation. "Whither," aye," whither" should a duck go, in the age of percussion caps, batteries, and patent cartridges? Under what upper "the fowler's eye" mark in "distant flight," his cloud may "figure floating," "vainly," or without power to do him "wrong," or his fowler self, justice? The bird, which the bard apotheosised, must have been either close by, or afar off. If he was near, he could have been talked to, or shot at, according to the taste of the spectator, and there would then have been no gammon about " vainly the fowler's eye." If he was too far off, and only "painted on the crimson sky," then neither goose-shot nor poetical questions could have touched a feather on his ear. Let us pray to be forgiven by all just admirers of the thoughtful music from which we have adopted the entablature of our present madness, if we have seemed to borrow.-God save the word! when could we repay !-steal-look atwith any sort of levity, the choice-culled flowers of phrase that sculpture those sweet dreamings of Bryant. They are mournful philosophy, reasoning grief, imagination with feet.Sense, heart, mind, flight. That brings us to the subject of ducks. Talk of "flights," and you will remember straightway old Drayton ; "The duck and mallow first the falconer's only sport Of river flights the chief,” Permit us, dear reader, to call your attention, for a few moments, to the flight of the mallard, or shoveller-which, we know not-in the precedent picture. If thou art blind, yet hast shot heretofore, know that the engraving exhibits, water, sky, bushes, hassocks, two ducks in trouble, a boat, one man with a setting pole, and another with a gun, in the bow. If thou BE blind, thou hast not lost much, for we do not hold the picture dearly. Two very-gentle-men have come out, at three hours after sunrise, to shove for crippled birds of any nation or species, black or white, infidel or christian, grasseater or crabcannibal. They are of the class of people who take their comfort while they shoot. Their clothes are accurate and comely fits. The gentleman with the pole, shoves with his coat on, buttoned up. Doubtless, they will knock over the invalid who flutters in the rear. It will be a merciful certainty, if the shooter stands firm, and holds right. The wounded one winnows the air weakly. Those birds had flown to the up-gushing fountains of the fresh meadows, and the healing creek-greens, to cure their stricken pinions, and sides sore with lead spent to sting them, in the lower bays ;not killed, but feverish after a hard experimental blow, struck by some patient point-shooter, who had begun to be tired of waiting for a company to wheel up nearer to his stool. That wooden parallelogram, called a scow, chiefest for a trout-pond cannot accomplish an original death;-unless a spring of teal, or a river broadhill, lie in close security behind some straggling patch of rushes, in the direct track of the intended water road. Yet let us not do injustice to the pretty picture. It shows, how, in a quiet way, a lover of pure air and kaleidiscopical colors, may float down an ebbing stream, through channel-enclosing bushes, and sedges trespassing upon the ancient but diminishing dominion of the river gods, and suddenly startle from his falsely imagined safety, some unfortunate speculator in water-weeds, who thought his weak or shattered fortune would be made sound and fat by "going in." One of these ducks is clearly "lame." The other looks as though he was taking the benefit of the wild-fowl absent debtor act. [That act differs from the enactment of the human New York Legislature, in one peculiar respect. In the one case, if the fowl owes you any feathers, or flesh, and can get out of your jurisdiction-or rather Collineodiction-he is safe; and may grant, bargain, sell, devise, bequeath, and run away from, all and singular his right, title, principal and interest in and to, and so forth, his temporary home and feeding spots. In the other case, the Sheriff is apt to form a strong attachment for the feeding places and singular chattels of the abscondant, and hold on to them, against his assignee, with a love "passing the love of women."]-The gentlemen have made a call upon him: but he is "out,"-out of reach. Whither is thy flight, good fowl? Of what shell-bank wert thou cashier? "Whither, midst falling due" notes, of whichknowing thy business place, and full of trust,-we thought we held the substance ?-Thou art lost, gone, etherealized silvered over with a cloudy dinner set, and wilt set thy table in other waters! "Yes, thou hast vanished, singing, from our sight! So must this earth be lost to eyes of thine: Around thee is illimitable light. Thou lookest down, and all appears to shine Pavilioned all around with golden spreading day." How crippled fowl will Biddleize and Swartwoutize, and make the fowlers who are after them d―n their eyes! "The pale purple even In the broad day light, Thou art unseen, and yet I hear thy shrill delight." No matter. There are ducks enough left, not so flighty, and with whom we can, easier, talk, in plain sight. Who doubts the assertion? If it be he who goes to Audubon's exhibition, and judges from that heterogeneous mixture of fish, flesh, and Indian sculls, what the glorious bays of Matowacs* can pro * For the best history of Matowacs, or, as it is generally called, "the State of Long Island," see the comprehensive, minute, and excellent book of B. F. Thompson, Esq., lately published. No islander, or island-fre |