Montauk Point.--American Golden Plover or Frost-Bird.--A True Story of Three Thousand in a Flock.--Lester’s Tavern.--Good Eating, Fine Fishing, and Splendid Shooting.--The Nepeague Beach. 178 CHAPTER VII. Rail and Rail-Shooting.--Seasons, Localities, and Incidents of Sport.--Use of Breech-loader or Muzzle-loader.--Equipment. 190 CHAPTER VIII. Wild-Fowl Shooting.--General Directions, from Boats, Blinds, or Batteries.--Retrievers from Baltimore and Newfoundland.--Western Sport.--Equipment. 205 CHAPTER IX. Duck-Shooting on the Inland Lakes.--The Club House.--Practical Views of Practical Men.--Moral Tales.--A Day’s Fishing.--The Closing Scenes. 219 CHAPTER X. Suggestions to Sportsmen.--A Definition of the Term.--Crack Shots.--The Art of Shooting.--The Art of not Shooting. 271 CHAPTER XI. Trap-Shooting.--Its Justification.--The Assistants.--Rules and Regulations.--Care of Birds.--Tricks of the Trade. 288 APPENDIX. Ornithological Descriptions of the Geese and Ducks, with Remarks and Suggestions on their Habits.--Rules of Trap-shooting. 303 THE GAME BIRDS OF THE NORTH. CHAPTER I. GAME AND ITS PROTECTION. By the ancient law of 1 and 2 William IV., chap. 32, under the designation of game, were included “hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustards.” Hunting and hawking date back to the earliest days of knight-errantry, when parties of cavaliers and ladies fair, mounted on their mettlesome steeds caparisoned with all the skill of the cunning artificers of those days, pursued certain birds of the air with the falcon, and followed the royal stag through the well preserved and extensive forests with packs of hounds. The term game, therefore, had an early significance and positive application, but was confined to the creatures pursued in one or the other of these two modes. The gun was first used for the shooting of feathered game in the early part of the eighteenth century; it soon became the favorite implement of the sportsman, and was brought into use, not only against the birds, but the beasts, of game. The huntsman no longer depends upon his brave dog and cloth-yard shaft, but upon his own powers of endurance and of marksmanship. Instead of watching the savage falcon strike his prey far up in the heavens, he follows his high-bred setters, till their wonderful natural instinct betrays to him the presence of the game.