nufacture in which it is employed. Mr. Succock, on the woollen manufacture, says:—

"The yolk, or nutriment of the wool, lessens in quantity after the sheep, and especially the ewe, is six years old; and to the decrease of the yolk, there soon follows a hard, inelastic, unyielding character of the wool, that renders it useless for several purposes for which the younger, and especially the wether wool is sought. This old wool, 'dies in the bowl,' or in other words, it is so destitute of the oily matter so essential to wool, that it sinks in the water in which it is washed, and acquires there a shrivelled and dead-like appearance."

The farmer, then, who grows wool, should be careful to keep no sheep until they are old; to keep them in good, clean pastures, not rich or rank; to see that they are in good health, and in good order, but not too fat; and finally, that the temperature be as equal as possible the year round; in the summer furnishing them with shades from the burning sun, and in the winter with sufficient protection from the piercing cold.-Gennesee Farmer.

MISCELLANEOUS.

To please the fancy and improve the mind.

DEER HUNTING.

FROM AUDUBON'S ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY.

The different modes of destroying deer are probably too well understood, and too successfully practised in the United States; for notwithstanding the almost incredible abundance of these beautiful animals in our forests and prairies, such havoc is carried on amongst them, that, in a few centuries, they will probably be as scarce in America, as the great bustard now is in Britain.

We have three modes of hunting deer, each varying in some slight degree in the different States and districts. The first is termed the still hunting, and is by far, the most destructive. The second is called firelight hunting; and is next in its exterminating effects. The third which may be looked upon as a mere amusement, is named driving. Although many deer are destroyed by this lat ter method, it is not by any means so pernicious as the others. These methods I shall describe separately.

Still hunting is followed as a kind of trade by most of our frontier men. To be practised with success, it requires great activity, an expert management of the rifle, and a thorough knowledge of the forest, together with an intimate acquaintance with the habits

of the deer, not only at different seasons of the year, but also at every hour of the day, as the hunter must be aware of the situations which the game prefers; and in which it is most likely to be found at any particular time. I might here present you with a full account of the habits of the deer, were it not my intention to lay before you at some future period, in the form of a distinct work, the observations which I have made on the various quadrupeds of our extensive territories.

Illustrations of any kind require to be presented in the best possible light. We will, therefore, suppose that we are now about to follow the true hunters, as the still hunter is also called, through the interior of the tangled woods, across morasses, ravines, and such places where the game may prove more or less plentiful, even should none be found there in the first instance. We will allow our hunter to have all the agility, patience, and care which his occupation requires, and will march in his rear, as if we were spies watching all his motions.

His dress, you observe, consists of a leather hunting shirt, and a pair of trowsers of the same material. His feet are well moccasined; he wears a belt round his waist; his heavy rifle is resting on his brawny shoulder; on one side hangs his ball-pouch, surmounted by the horn of an ancient buffalo, once the terror of the herd, but now containing a pound of the best gunpowder; his butcher knife is scabbarded in the same strap, and behind is a tomahawk, the handle of which has been thrust through his girdle. He walks with so rapid a step that probably few men could follow him, unless for a short distance, in their anxiety to witness his ruthless deeds. He stops, looks at the flint of his gun, its priming, and the leather cover of the lock, then glances his eye towards the sky to judge the course most likely to lead him to the

game.

The heavens are clear, the red glare of the morning sun gleams through the lower branches of the lofty trees, the dew hangs in pearly drops at the top of every leaf. Already has the emerald hue of the foliage been converted into the more glowing tints of our autumnal months. A slight frost appears on the fence rails of his little cornfields. As he proceeds he looks to the dead foliage under his feet, in search of the well known traces of a buck's hoof. Now he bends toward the ground, on which something has attracted his attention. See! he alters his course, increases his speed, and will soon reach the opposite hill. Now, he moves with caution, stops at almost every tree, and peeps forward, as if already within shooting distance of the game. He advances again, but how very slowly! He has reached the declivity upon which the sun shines in all its glowing splendor; but mark him! he takes the gun from his shoulder, has already thrown aside the leathern cover of the lock, and is wiping the edge of his flint with his tongue. Now he stands like a monumental figure, perhaps measuring the distance that lies between him and the game which he has in view, His rifle is slowly raised, the report follows, and he runs. Let us

run also. Shall I speak to him, and ask him the result of this first. essay? Assuredly, reader, I know him well.

"Pray, friend, what have you killed!" for to say "what have you shot at? might apply the possibility of his having missed; and so might hurt his feeling. "Nothing but a buck." "And where is it?" Oh, it has taken a jump or so, but I settled it, and will soon be with it. My ball struck, and must have gone through his heart." We arrive at the spot where the animal had laid down among the grass in a thicket of grapevines, sumachs, and spruce bushes, where it intended to repose during the middle of the day. The place is covered with blood, the hoofs of the deer, have left deep prints in the ground as it bounced in the agonies produced by its wound; but the blood that has gushed from its side discloses the course which it has taken. We soon reach the spot. There lies the buck, its tongue out, its eye dim, its breath exhausted: it is dead. The hunter draws his knife, cuts the buck's throat almost assunder, and prepares to skin it. For this purpose he hangs it upon a branch of a tree. When the skin is removed he cuts off the hams, and abandoning the rest of the carcass to the wolves and vultures, reloads his gun, flings the venison, enclosed by the skin, upon his back, secures it with a strap, and walks off in rearch of more game, well knowing that in the immediate neighborhood another at least is to be found.

Had the weather been warmer, the hunter would have sought for the buck along the shadowy side of the hills. Had it been spring season, he would have led us through some thick cane brake to the margin of some remote lake, where you would have seen the deer immersed to his head in the water to save his body from tormenting attacks of the musquitoes. Had winter overspread the earth with a covering of snow, he would have searched the low damp woods where the mosses and lichens, on which, at that period, the deer feeds, abound, the trees being generally crusted with them for several feet from the ground.

At one time he might have marked the places where the deer clears the velvet from his horns by rubbing them against the low stems of bushes, and where he frequently scrapes the earth with his fore hoofs; at another, he would have betaken himself to places where persimmons and crab apples abound, as beneath these trees the deer frequently stops to munch their fruit. During early spring, our hunter would imitate the bleating of the doe, and thus frequently obtain both her and her fawn; or like some tribes of Indians, he would prepare a deer's head, placed on a stick, and, creeping with it amongst the tall grass of the prairies, would decoy the deer within reach of his rifle. But we have seen enough of the still hunter. Let it suffice for me to add, that, by the mode pursued by him, thousands of deer are annually killed, many individuals shoot these animals merely for the skin, not caring for even the most valuable portions of the flesh, unless hunger or a near market induces them to carry off the hams.

The mode of destroying deer by fire-light, or, as it is named in

some parts of the country, forest-light, never fails to produce a very singular feeling in him who witnesses it for the first time. There is something in it which at times appears awfully grand. At other times, a certain degree of fear creeps over the mind, and even effects the physical powers, of him who follows the hunter through the thick undergrowth of our woods, having to leap his horse over hundreds of huge fallen trunks, at one time impeded by a straggling grape vine crossing his path, at another squeezed between two stubborn saplings, whilst their twigs come smack in his face, as his companion had forced his way through them. Again, he every now and then runs the risk of breaking his neck, by being suddenly pitched headlong on the ground, as his horse sinks into a hole, covered over with moss. But I must proceed in a more regular manner, and leave my reader to judge whether such a mode of hunting would suit his taste or not.

The hunter has returned to his camp or to his house, has rested and eaten of his game. He waits impatiently for the return of night, he has procured a quantity of pine knots, filled with resinous matter, and has an old frying-pan, that for aught I know to the contrary, may have been used by his great grand mother, in which the pine-knots are to be placed when lighted. The horses stand saddled at the door. The hunter comes forth, his rifle slung on his shoulder, and springs upon one of them, while his son, or a servant, mounts the other, with the frying-pan and pine knots. Thus accoutred, they proceed towards the interior of the forest. When they have arrived at the spot where the hunt is to begin, they strike fire with a flint and steel, and kindle the resinous wood. The person who carries the fire moves in the direction judged to be the best. The blaze illuminates the near objects, but the distant parts seem involved in deepest obscurity. The hunter who bears the gun keeps immediately in front, and after a while discoves before him two feeble lights which are procured by the reflection of the pine fire from the eyes of an animal of the deer or wolf kind. The animal stands quite still. To one unacquainted with this strange mode of hunting, the glare from its eyes, might bring to his imagination some lost hobgoblin that had strayed from its usual haunts. The hunter, however nowise intimidated, approaches the object sometimes so near as to discern its form, when, raising the rifle to his shoulder, he fires and kills it on the spot. He then dismounts, secures the skin and such portions of the flesh as he may want, in the manner already described, and continues his search through the greater part of the night, sometimes until the dawn of day, shooting from five to ten deer, should these animals be plentiful. This kind of hunting proves fatal, not to the deer alone, but also sometimes to wolves, and now and then to a horse or cow which may have straggled far into the woods.

Now, reader, prepare to mount a generous, full-blooded Virginian hunter. See that your gun is in complete order, for, hark to the sound of the bugle and horn, and the mingled clamor, of a pack

of harriers! Your friends are waiting you, under the shade of the wood, and we must together go driving the light-footed deer. The distance over which one has to travel is seldom felt, when pleasure is anticipated as the result; so galloping we go pell-mell through the woods to some well-known place, where many a fine buck has dropped its antlers under the ball of the hunter's rifle. The servants, who are called the drivers, have already begun their search. Their voices are heard exciting the hounds, and unless we put spurs to our steeds, we may be too late at our stand, and thus loose the first opportunity of shooting the fleeting game as it passes by. Hark, again! the dogs are in chase, the horn sounds louder and more clearly. Hurry, hurry on, or we shall be sadly behind!

Here we are at last! Dismount, fasten your horse to this tree, place yourself by the side of that large yellow poplar, and mind that you do not shoot me! The deer is fast approaching: I will to my own stand and he who shoots him dead wins the prize.

The deer is heard coming. It has inadvertently cracked a dead stick with its hoof, and now the dogs are so near it that it will pass in a moment. There it comes! How beautifully it bounds over the ground! What a splendid head of horns! How easy its attitudes, depending, as it seems to do, on its own swiftness for safety! All is in vain however: a gun is fired and the animal plunges and doubles with incomparable speed! There he goes! He passes another stand, from which a second shot, better directed than the first, brings him to the ground. The dogs, the servants, the sportsmen, are now rushing forward to the spot. The hunter who has shot it, is congratulated on his skill or good luck, and the chase begins. again in some other part of the woods.

A few lines of explanation may be required to convey a clear idea of this mode of hunting. Deer are fond of following and retracing the paths which they have formerly pursued, and continue to do so, even after having been shot at more than once. tracks are discovered by persons on horseback in the woods, or a deer is observed crossing a field or a stream. When this has been

These

noticed twice, the deer may be shot from the places called stands by the sportsman, who is stationed there, and waits for it, a line of stands being generally formed so as to cross the path which the game will follow. The person who ascertains the usual pass of the game, or discovers the parts where the animal feeds or lies down during the day, gives intimation to his friends, who then prepare for the chase. The servants start the deer with the hounds, and by good management generally succeed in making it run the course that will sooner bring it to the death. But, should the deer be cautious and take another course, the hunters, mounted on swift horses, gallop through the woods to intercept it, guided by the sound of the dogs, and frequently succeed in shooting it. The sport is extremely agreeable, and proves successful on almost every occa

sion.

Hoping that this account may be sufficient to induce you, kind