Since the law now protects ducks from being food for the guns of boys, they now, generally on Saturdays and holidays, walk in groups, guns in hand, along our streams and marshes, always ready to take a pot shot at anything. The water-hen--generally called hell-diver--gets most of the shots which the boys can spare. This fowl can generally accommodate the boys to all the fun they want, in the shooting line, and with but little danger to itself. Its anatomical form is so peculiar and its sense of sight and hearing so acute that it can, nine times out of ten, dodge the shots from the boys’ guns from the time of explosion of the charge to the driving of it home. Outwardly it is formed very much like the duck, and is about the size of our ordinary wood duck. Its feet, however, are placed far back in its body, like the great auk. From this fact it is a most expert swimmer, and is also enabled to dive as quickly as powder and shot explode. It is not at all uncommon for this fowl to dive to avoid the shot from a gun and swim under water, wholly out of sight, ten rods from the place where it went down. In reality it is a species of duck, but since it feeds mostly upon small fishes, its flesh is rank, oily, and not palatable for the table. When August comes around it is no uncommon sight to see the mother water-hen swimming around followed by her brood of six to ten young water-hens about as big as cricket-balls. Wonderfully tame, too, they get when they are not daily molested, and one can spend a very pleasant half hour or so in watching the brood as they float along with the mother, every few minutes diving for food. CHAPTER XIV. Lake Ontario--Weather observations with regard to it--Area and depth--No underground passage for its waters--Daily horizon of the author--A sunrise described--Telegraph poles an eye-sore--The pleasing exceeds the ugly.