Every one--whether the gentleman who, in search of health or pleasure, visits the muddy bays or sand-spits of our coast, or the market-gunner who has learnt naught of useful labor for many years but to handle skilfully his heavy double-barrel--every one, we say, who pursues wild-fowl, whether for sport or business, is interested in enforcing upon his friends and neighbors the necessity of discontinuing the use of the battery and pivot-gun. Although the results of the day’s shooting may be diminished for a time, they will both gain in the long run; and we shall once more see the crowds of geese, brant, and ducks stretching in interminable lines across the sky; and have them flying by the points where we hide, or dropping to our stools near by, as plenteously every day as we can now kill them, in exceptional cases, from the battery. When their feeding-grounds are undisturbed, their multitudinous hosts will again cover the waters of our bays, and hold their noisy consultations over the many theories and crotchets which are disputed in duck philosophy. Then the true sportsman will visit his favorite tavern, located conveniently at the edge of the salt meadows, certain, in the proper season, of having fair sport; and the willing bay-man will again reap rich and permanent harvests, either for his patron or himself. Now a good bag is so rare that gentlemen seldom go to Long Island for duck-shooting, and the inhabitants lose a valuable custom in consequence; and although, by selecting a propitious occasion, the market-man sometimes still kills a great number, he experiences a vast majority of poor days. It is, therefore, the manifest interest of both classes to repress these unjustifiable and murderous modes of shooting, and to encourage, by all possible means, the return of wild-fowl to their former favorite haunts--the bays, lagoons, and inlets of our own beloved coast. CHAPTER II. GUNNERY--MUZZLE-LOADERS AND BREECH-LOADERS. To the young sportsman, armed with the finest of implements, and trusting much to them for his success, it is a matter of mortification and surprise how well a bad gun will shoot in good hands; nevertheless, no true sportsman ever lived but, if he were able by any self-denial to scrape the means together, would purchase a valuable and necessarily expensive fowling-piece. Not only is a well made and handsomely finished gun safer and lighter than a cheap affair manufactured for the wholesale trade; not only does it ordinarily carry closer and recoil less; but it needs fewer repairs, lasts infinitely longer, and is always a matter of pride and delight to its owner.