Duck-shooting from a hut, as represented in Fig. 90, is the method most practised. The sportsmen are hidden in a small hut placed on the edge of some lake or river, or it may be erected in the middle of the water on a heap of stones. Here they lie in wait for the birds in order to get a close shot at them. They generally use fowling-pieces of great length and large calibre, called Duck-guns. Shooting from Duck punts is also practised all round the coast, and on the larger lakes, ponds, and estuaries. On the Saône, the gunners, accompanied by a boatman, take their places in a long, light, narrow, pointed boat, or punt, called a _fourquette_. The two men, lying down in the bottom of the boat, are hidden by faggots placed in front of them, the muzzle of the duck-gun protruding through the faggots. Thus floating down the river among the Ducks, they get an opportunity of shooting them without being perceived. Sportsmen in France sometimes employ a very odd artifice to baffle the suspicious instinct of these birds: a man disguises himself as a cow by means of an outline of the animal roughly made of common cardboard. Under favour of this disguise he gets near the Wild Ducks without exciting their fears, if only aware how to make good use of his device; that is, if he describes gentle and graceful curves, so as to advance gradually without alarming the timid Palmipedes. But this sport, though productive enough when skilfully managed, is not unattended with danger. A sportsman, who had dressed himself up in this disguise, happened inadvertently to find his way among a herd of cattle, which, detecting the imposture, immediately ran at him and chased him about the meadow. He thought himself fortunate in escaping with the loss of his disguise, which he abandoned to the fury of his horned assailants. [Illustration: Fig. 90.--Duck-shooting from a Hut.] Large numbers of Ducks are taken by means of nets and various snares, which want of space prevents us from here enumerating. The Domestic Duck, _Anas domestica_, is a descendant of the Wild Duck, or, as some think, of the Shoveller. The first tame Duck, the ancestor of a family since so prodigiously multiplied, probably proceeded from an egg which had been taken from some reedy marsh, and hatched under a Hen. The Duck, however, has been reduced to a state of domesticity from a very remote period, and has been of incalculable utility to mankind, filling in our poultry-yards no unworthy place. Ducks' eggs are a wholesome and agreeable article of food, and the flesh of the bird itself is most savoury. Epicures highly prized, and rightly so, the _pâtés de foie de canard_ of Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nérac, and Amiens (we arrange them here in their order of merit, not according to Baron Brisse's _dictum_, but following our own poor gastronomic capabilities). Their feathers, although not so valuable as those of the Goose, are articles of considerable importance in commerce.