There are four or tive simple methods v{ fowling prac- ticed at this day in Palestine which are probably iden- tical with those alluded to in tlie Old Test. The sim- | plest. but by no means the least successful, among the I dexterous i$edawin, is fowling with the throw -stick. ! The only weapon used is a short stick, about eighteen inches long and half an inch in diameter, and the chase is conducted after the fashion in which, as we read, the Australian natives pursue the kangaroo with their boom- erang. When the game has been discovered, which is generally the red-legged great partridge {Citccabis sax- atilit, Jley.). the desert partridge (.1 mmoperdix lleyi, \ Gr.), or the little bustard {Olix tetrax, Linn.), the stick [ is hurled with a revolving motion so as to strike the legs [ of the bird as it rims, or sometimes at a rather higher | elevation, so that when the victim, alarmed by the ap- proach of the weapon, begins to rise, its wings are struck and it is slightly disabled. The Heet pursuers soon come up, and, using their burnouses as a sort of net. catch and at once cut the throat of the game. The j Mussulmans rigidly observe the Mosaic injunction (Lev. I xvii. \'.\) to spill the blood of every slain animal on the ground. This primitive mode of fowling is confined to those birds which, like the red-legged partridges and ' bustards, rely for safety chietly on their rinming powers, and are with difficulty induced to take tiight. Tris- tram once witnessed the capture of the little desert partridge (.1 mmnperdic lleiji) by this method in the wil- derness near Hebron; an interesting illustration of the expression in 1 Sam. xxvi, 20, " as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains."
A more scieniitic metiiod of fowling is that alluded to in ICcclus. xi. Ho, by the use of decoy-l)irds. Tlie liirds employed for this purpose are very carefully trained and perfectly tame, that they may utter their natural call-note without any alarm from the neighborhood of man. Partridges, ipiails, larks, and plovers are taken by this kind of fowling, especially the two former. The decoy-bird, in a cage, is placed in a concealed position, whilf the fowler is secreted in I he neighlxirhood, near enough to manage his gins and snares. For game birds a common methtxi is to const ruct of brush wooil a narrow run leading to the cage, sometitnes using a sort of bag- net within the brushwood. This has a trap-door at the entrance, and when the dupe has entered the run, the <lo<ir is dropped, (ireat numbers of (piail are takiMi in this maimer in spring. Sonielimes. instead of the more elaliorate decoy of a run, a mere cage with an open door in placed in front of the <lecoy-bird. of course well con- cealed by grand and herbage, and the door is let fall by a string, as in the other method. For larks and other Kmalh-r birds the decoy is used in a somewhat different maniii-r. The cage is placed without concealment on the trroimd, and springes, nets, or horse-hair nooses are laiil round it to entangle the feet of those which curios- ity attracts to the stranger: or a net is so coutrived as to be drawn over them, if the cage be placed in a thick-
et or among brushwood. Immense numbers can be taken by this means in a very short sjiace of time. Traps, the door of which overbalances by the weight of the bird, exactly like the tra()s used by the shepherds on the Sussex downs to take wheatears and larks, are constructed by the Bedawin boys, and also the horse- liair s|)ringes so familiar to all English schoolboys, though these devices are not wholesale enough to repay the professional fowler. It is to the noose on the ground that reference is made in Psa. cxxiv, 7, "The snare is broken, and we are escaped." In the towns and gardens great numbers of birds, starlings and others, are taken for the markets at night by means of a large loose net on two poles, and a lantern, which startles the birds from their perch, when they fall into the net.
At the season of migration immense numbers of birds, and especially quails, are taken by a yet more simple method. When notice has been given of the arrival of a flight of quails, the whole village turns out. The birds, fatigued by their long flight, generally descend to rest in some open space a few acres in extent. The fowlers, perhaps twenty or thirty in nimiber, spreail themselves in a circle round them, and. extending their large loose burnouses with both arms before them, gen- tly advance towards the centre, or to some spot where they take care there shall be some low brushwood. The birds, not seeing their pursuers, and only slightly alarm- ed by the cloaks spread before them, begin to run to- gether without taking flight, until they are hemmed into a very small space. At a given signal the whole of the pursuers make a din on all sides, and the flock, not seeing any mode of escape, rush hudtiled together into the bushes, when the burnouses are thrown over them, and the whole are easily captured by hand.