and others are made of bunches of grass or bushes carelessly stuck into the soft earth, and behind them the hunter crouches to await the game. Blinds are usually built at the edge of the water at low tide; for hunting is best during a norther, and the tide is always low at that time. Consequently, a blind is generally a wet place, but in this climate, no ill effects result from a little dampness.

If you would enjoy the best shooting of the day, you must rise before daylight and hurry away to arrange your decoys; and then conceal yourself in the blind before the first

begin to pass your blind, you cannot see to shoot unless they are right over the water, and even then they cannot be seen until they are upon you. That is where speed and accuracy are most severely tested.

It grows a little lighter, and you make out a bunch of ducks three hundred yards off. Yes, they are coming your way; now they change their direction, and are gone. No, they turn again and are coming straight for the decoys at a rapid They turn to leave; no, they are circling. Now they are coming again, slowing down to alight among

rate.

streaks of light begin to illumine the east. Even then you will hear the ducks calling to one another out on the water, or engaging in spirited. and loquacious contests over some succulent morsels of food. It is possible that you may have a quarter of an hour to wait before it is light enough to shoot accurately, and the nearby music of almost innumerable waterfowl will irritate your nerves, yet you must sit quietly and listen, for you can do nothing else. The ducks and daylight usually come together. When the first flocks

the decoys. Now is your time! Select your birds and give it to them. Ah, that's the way to do it! And two plump green-heads splash and float, breasts up, among the decoys.

For an hour the shooting is lively; then the flight is over for the morning. How many ducks can one kill during this early flight? The number depends entirely upon his skill and experience as a hunter; it may be two or three, or it may be a hundred.

Now for camp and a nine-o'clock breakfast. Then the day must be

whiled away, possibly with the narration of hunting experiences, past and present, or with the disposition of the game; perhaps with a combination of the two. You might visit the ponds and nearby streams and secure a small number of birds, but the physical labor necessary is hardly repaid by the amount of game secured; so the hunter seldom exerts himself much during midday. In the afternoon, an hour and a half before sundown, the hunter returns to his blind, and if the weather has not changed, he will have almost as good sport as in the morning, and the flight increases as the night approaches. Even after it is too dark to shoot, the whir and whistle of wings will startle you as you are picking up your game, preparatory to returning to camp. The flight may continue for an hour after dark.

The skiff-blind, also used by Texas hunters, is made by completely hiding the skiff with a number of layers of marsh grass or reeds arranged in a natural manner. Two men can work to better advantage in a boat than any other number, for the skiff is slowly poled along by one man while his companion lies in the bow ready to shoot. It is slow work, for It is slow work, for the skiff must appear to be drifting, and when it is skillfully handled, very good shooting may be had. While poling along, it is necessary to keep a close watch on the ducks. Sometimes they are much more easily approached than at others. After a shot, the hunters let the skiff remain still or float with the tide, so that the ducks will settle down again near by-perhaps right where they were before. On calm days, when the birds are not flying, much good and exciting sport can be had in the ducking skiff, although large bags cannot be made. But the monotony of waiting is not present as in a blind, and a paddle over the smooth waters of the little bays is a pleasure, even though no game is killed. It should

be understood that I am not advocating the use of anything but the ordinary gun for such work; swivel and punt guns are hardly thought of by sportsmen. There is considerable work connected with this kind of hunting, too much for some gunners, but it often makes the ducks move so that the shooting from a blind on shore is very much improved.

The sink-box, so indispensable on Chesapeake Bay, is almost unknown to the duck hunter along the Texas coast. There are so many easier and equally profitable methods of securing an abundance of game-methods with which our hunters have been familiar almost from childhood—that there is little disposition to investigate other ways as long as the ancestral methods produce such satisfactory results.

The casual hunter secures a few ducks by different methods-as many ways, almost, as the number of ducks that he gets. He will crawl to the edge of a bluff, below which the birds are feeding, and fire down upon them; again, he will cautiously creep to the edge of a fresh-water pond when the ducks are slaking their noon-day thirst; at another time he will get a shot or two as some unsuspecting duck flies within range; or, sailing about the bays, he will occasionally get near enough to a bunch of ducks to get one or two.

The small boy is also a hunter, in this region of ducks. As soon as he is able to convey a small shotgun to the bays, he joins the list of amateur sportsmen. The small boy, whether white, Mexican or negro, infests the shores during the winter. Usually, he does not allow a bunch of wildfowl to approach nearer than two hundred yards before he sends a load of shot in their direction. If he kills a dozen ducks during the winter, he considers that he has done very well; and the amount of ammunition used is limited only by the amount his father will provide for him. It is nothing unusual for the small boy to use one

thousand loaded shells and have not even one little duck in return. If you want to imagine that we have gone to war with Spain, and that you are near a battlefield, go, when the ducks are moving lively, and stand about half a mile to leeward of several small boys with guns.

Exposure to cold, such as is necessary to successful duck hunting along the north Atlantic coast and its tributary waters, is entirely unknown here. It is true that the best hunting is to be had when a "norther" is blowing, but during one of these storms, the mercury rarely sinks below thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and often it is not so cold as that. Benumbed fingers are unknown, and while the early mornings that are best suited for hunting are quite chilly, by nine o'clock one is scarcely aware that it is winter. The enthusiasm aroused by the sport counteracts any tendency to become chilled or drowsy, and prevents the injurious effects that might otherwise result from occupying a damp blind.

One of the chief advantages of our duck shooting is, that it is not in any way hampered or restricted.

many places along the upper Atlantic, the best hunting grounds are controlled by wealthy men or hunting clubs composed of them. Such is not the case here. The man who gets to the grounds first in the morning is the man who gets the best shooting. Yet his being there first one day does not give him the claim of priority on succeeding days. As a

rule, no hunter will take another man's blind if the owner wants it; yet there is nothing to prevent him from erecting one alongside that of another gunner.

Usually, by the first of March all of the able-bodied ducks have departed for their summer homes. Many wounded ones, however, remain all summer and raise their young in the secluded marshes.

The hunter in camp has plenty of time to devote to the culinary art; and the proper cooking of a duck is of more importance just then than a "bulge" or a "break" in the wheat market. Often, when the evening hunt is over, I select two or three of the fattest ducks, carefully draw them, insert salt and pepper, also a little chili pepper, - and some Worcestershire sauce if my palate happens to crave such pungent flavor. Then the birds are wrapped in newspapers which have been dipped into the bay until thoroughly wet. A hole is dug in the sand, and the ducks placed in it and covered two inches deep; over this I build a roaring fire, which is renewed before retiring. In the morning it takes about a minute to "peel" the ducks ; the skin and feathers come off together. what a dish it makes! This way of roasting a duck or a fish doubtless came down from the Indians, although they were not particular about drawing the game before cooking. Instead of paper, they wrapped whatever they were to cook in clay, which baked to a perfect shell.

And

TH

HAT the American bicycle is the most perfect mechanical creation of the world, is perhaps a rash statement, but it certainly was the most popular one last month. During the weeks when the big cycle shows were in progress at Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, hundreds of thousands of wheeling enthusiasts examined and compared the 1897 models exhibited. Every prominent manufacturer of bicycles on this side of the Atlantic was represented at these expositions, and if one had the patience to examine in detail all of the exhibits in any one of these shows and incidentally, the technical knowledge to profit by his examination - he would have gathered a most favorable opinion of American bicycles.

One thing perhaps more than any other impressed itself upon the average visitor to these expositions, and that is the fact that there are many different makes of high-grade bicycles, which differ one from another chiefly in minor points of construction. To be sure, the oldest manufacturers have had the advantage of longer experience, but many of their expert mechanics have graduated into younger concerns, carrying their accumulated knowledge with them; and they now help to produce nearly, if not quite, as good wheels as those put out by the older companies. At each of these expositions, an initiated but unprejudiced visitor might count a score or more of high-grade bicycles, each of which was thoroughly reliable and up-to-date in all points of its construction. There are always a few cheap imitations, and these cannot be too carefully avoided, but there never was a year when so many reliable wheels were on the market.

Perhaps not since the introduction

of the pneumatic tire, which so revolutionized the bicycle-building industry, have there been fewer radical changes in the models of one year over that of its predecessor. Once it was gearing; then it was tubing; again it was tires, but now each seems so nearly to have reached perfection that the 1897 models differ from those of 1896 largely in the delicate points of construction, to which the average rider is utterly indifferent.

Few changes are seen in weights of '97 wheels, or in gearing. The hubs, spokes, rims and tires of the wheels appear to be very much the same as last year, and the most noticeable alteration which has gone the rounds is that in the framework. After experimenting with both large and small tubing and finally settling down to the satisfactory sizes of last season, the principal manufacturers are now striving to increase the rigidity and durability of their frames. The only noted exception to this is in the D-tubing used in the rear forks of many of the wheels. This D-tubing is simply the ordinaryshaped tubes, flattened on the inside to D-shape to allow more space where the rear tire passes between the forks.

In order to lessen the twisting strain caused by the sprocket-chain connection, a more direct lead from the front to the rear sprocket has been effected in some of the new wheels. This is secured by narrowing the tread more than last year. The sprocket-wheel is thus closer to the crank-hanger, and the lead of the chain is perfectly straight to the rear sprocket, thus avoiding any side friction in the chain. To secure this result, the rear forks converge very quickly just forward of the rear tire, or a sharp angle narrows their width

near the crank-hanger, in order to make room for the sprocket-wheel pushed in by the narrow tread, and thus give the direct lead to the chain.

The hue and cry that was raised two years ago about the breaking of tubing at the joints was followed by many forms of outside reinforcement. Wherever the framework was brazed together, the constant jarring caused by rough riding gradually unsettled the joints, and some form of reinforcement was necessary to give the '96 frames enough rigidity to last as long as the other parts of the bicycle. But a new danger developed last year, and it was found that the outside reinforcement used for the joints of the frame, only shifted the point of danger from the actual joint to the spot where the reinforcement abruptly met the ori ginal tubing.

As recently described by an expert, the vibrations of the frame ran along through the tubing until they reached the abrupt point of reinforcement, but beyond this it was impossible to pass on the motion, just as it would be impossible for a rope fastened to a vibrating harp-string, to take up the motion of its thinner neighbor. Thus the constant stoppage of these vibrations at the point of reinforcement, gradually disintegrated the steel at this point, and there remained almost as much danger of breaking as before the reinforcement was used.

This season, flush joints will take the place of the former methods of strengthening. Where the horizonal tube of the framework meets the head, it is brazed on flush and reinforced from the inside by a gradually tapering tube of steel with "fishmouth" ends, cast at right angles and brazed to the two points of tubing where they come in contact. This is the most prevalent alteration. which is found in the frames of the '97 models exhibited this spring.

Another tendency that has been shown by a number of the manufacturers is to lower the frame, particu

larly on racing wheels. It is claimed for this that the lowering of the power increases the rigidity of the frame. In a number of instances, the crank-shaft is several inches below the axle of the rear wheel, and in consequence, the chain leads upward to the rear sprocket at quite an angle. In one particular racing machine, this alteration brings the pedals, with the usual six-and-ahalf-inch crank throw, to within five or six inches of the ground; but this wheel is intended only for track racing or road racing over very smooth

courses.

Another feature this year is the general tendency to cast the crank

F

NEW METHOD OF INSIDE REINFORCEMENT FOR FLUSH JOINTS. shaft and crank-axle in one piece, or in two pieces joined inside the hanger, instead of fastening the crank-shafts to the axle at their elbows. It is claimed for this change that it will do away with many accidents through the breaking of the crank connections, and the general adoption of the idea argues rather in favor of the theory. Several variations of this are seen, but the one that seems to meet with most favor is that in which each crank and half the shaft are cast in a separate piece, and the two sections joined in the centre of the crank-hanger by any of a number of different devices.

Some improvements are also noticed in the sprocket-chains, but these are only minor changes aimed at additional strength. Several chains are shown, the links of which can be