flight, like swallows or bats, and be as wise at last as they were at first. It is simply a little frame, on wheels, made of good and well seasoned ash, and thereon placed a moderate sized stanchion-gun; the recoil of which is taken by a long rope-breeching, that closes a spiral spring, in order to ease the frame, and thereby enable you to have it light. You have only to lash down the but of the gun, so as to elevate the muzzle, and the machine may be wheeled about like a barrow, or "towed" behind any kind of vehicle.

To approach birds-lean with your chest and elbows on the sacking, and go on your knees, having, of course, knee-caps or water-boots, till you get within about a hundred and fifty yards of your fowl: then crawl into your shell, so far as to leave out only your feet; and work on with them. But, as this is rather harder labour, you may leave it till absolutely necessary. Be careful to approach as slowly as possible for the last fifty yards; and, if you see birds looking up wild, lie quiet, and wait till their heads are down again, before you move on.

This machine may be covered with boughs, &c., or masked in front, with the skin of a sheep, deer, or what you please; and the birds will then let you approach them as well as if you were some harmless quadruped. (I would allow the critic to say-" an ass" —if the thing had not answered most admirably; as many people who have seen it can prove.) This invention being difficult to explain, and the subject a dull one to write on, I will now give three views of it, which were taken by Mr. Cornelius Varley, with is admirable invention, the patent "graphic telescope."

I have added a little "approach," or Birnam wheelbarrow, or march-of-intellect machine, or whatever we are to call it-(the clods call it the "nwisable proach")-for the use of small guns. This was tried by a gamekeeper, at some leverets feeding, which, on seeing him, always ran into covert, three gunshots off. But when he advanced in this machine, he killed some

with the greatest ease. I have withheld putting the boughs or covering on this, in order to show the wheelwright how to make it. The expense of my little one was about twelve shillings; so that I dare say even a rogue would make one for a guinea or thirty shillings. The large one is a heavier and more expensive concern. As an ambush to wait in, it answers comfortably for all places, whether wet or dry. But to advance with it on birds, we, of course, require tolerably good ground. Let me see the man who will invent any thing to work a stanchion-gun over bad ground!

EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE.

The first sketch represents a bird's-eye view, to show the machinery, viz. the spiral spring, which closes by the recoil of the gun; the painted canvas, that hides the fore-wheels; and the pockets convenient for stowing ramrods, &c.-Q. Why is the spring not in the centre? A. Because, if it was, that breadth which would correspond with the space occupied by the shooter, would give an unnecessary increase of size and weight to the machine. The second is a foreshortened view of the apparatus, dressed up with boughs, as it appears when approaching birds and under mask of a wooded back-ground. The third is a broadside view, with the gun fixed, showing the rope-breeching, by the pull of which, on a sliding bar of wood, the spiral spring is closed: the sliding support, on which the gun rests firm, to whatever height you want to fire a sitting shot; and the canvas cover above, which, when put on, conceals the operations of the shooter. The small machine, near the centre of the plate, is for a common shoulder-gun, which may be rested on the front bar, and thus fired, like a rifle.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRAKY)

ASTOR ENCY AND
TILDE FOUNDATION8.

SHOOTING WILDFOWL IN FRANCE.

ON the French coast, although they are all great shooters, and especially on a Sunday! I could never meet with a very small boat of any kind.

I remember going to a lake, called Gattemare, about a league from Barfleur, which contained more wildfowl (chiefly dunbirds) than ever I had before seen together. They floated with the greatest composure, while the canaille were firing at coots, &c., from the banks; and the lake being above a mile long, and nearly half a mile broad, these birds, aware of their safety (like the ranks of puffins on a cliff), remained indifferent to the noise of guns. Finding nothing could be done with them, I, and some friends, tempted the commissary of marine, by a promise of bringing birds enough to keep his family for a week, and giving him something from Angleterre, to exert himself most zealously in getting a boat overland. This having been accomplished, we started before daylight; but instead of finding a petit canot, as he and his gens d'armes had described it, we were ushered into a huge man-of-war's boat, that, in a few minutes, put the whole pond in motion with the rising of birds, and very soon after was nearly sending us to the bottom of it, by the rapidity with which it leaked.