FOWLER'S SOLUTION. See ARSENIC.
FOWLING—time killing or taking of birds for the sake of their flesh, feathers, etc.— is very variously practiced in different parts of the world. In some places it is one of the principal employments of the people, who greatly depend on it for their subsistence. and prosecute it with the greatest toil and danger; elsewhere, it is in some of its forms a recreation, for the sake of which much expense is incurred by the opulent. The modes in which it is practiced depend partly on the habits of different kinds of birds, end partly on the progress of .civilization and the arts. The peculiar habits of some birds render it very easy to take or kill them. Nets are much used in the capture of many kinds of birds, particularly of small birds intended for the table; bird-lime is employed for the same purpose, and birds are taken by means of it in greatest numbers near their particularly in hot and dry weather; gins, springes, and traps of various kinds are also employed.
The numerous kinds of ducks, geese, and other anatidce, are, in an economical point of view, among the important oI birds, and the methods employed for their cap ture are very various and interesting. These, however, we reserve for a separate article, WILDFOWL; and refraining also here from any notice of the amusements of the sports man. we shall proceed to describe the methods adopted in rock-fowling, on which the inhabitants of many northern coasts and islands, in a great measure, depend for their means of subsistence. Of all kinds of F., it is by far the most adventurous. The objects of pursuit are gannets or solan geese, gulls, terns, guillemots, and other sea birds. which frequent the most lofty precipices. and breed on their shelves and ledges. The flesh, even of the best of them, is generally coarse, and of a fishy taste, yet it forms great part of the food of the poor people, fresh and salted for winter provisions. The flesh of the young is more tender and pleasant than that of the adult birds. The eggs of some species are sought after by the same perilous means as the birds them selves. The feathers and oil are articles of commerce. The people of St. Kilda pay part of their rent in feathers 'and fulmar oil, the rocks being apportioned among its inhabitants as exactly as its soil. Almost every man in the island is a eragsman or rock-fowler, which is pretty nearly the case also in' many other northern isles. The multitudes of sea-fowl around many of the rocky northern coasts is prodigious, resem bling at a distance—as may be seen at the bass rock in the firth of Forth—the bees around a busy hive. Uninhabited islets are annually visited by fowlers, as Rorrera by the people of St. Kilda; and the " stacks," or high insular rocks near the shore, are often extremely productive. These are, of course, reached by means of a boat, and whilst landing is often both difficult and dangerous, the climbing of the precipice is still more so. The Norwegian fowlers, or " bird-men," carryon such expeditions with a bird-pole or fowling-staff, about five or six yards long, and a rope of several fathoms. The bird-pole has an iron hook at one end; it has also a flat head, and by means of it the fowler is pushed and guided by his comrades below as he ascends a very steep or precipitous cliff; by means of it, also, he strikes down or draws in birds. The rope is used to fasten two fowlers together, being attached to the waist of each; they aid one another in climb ing, pushing, and drawing one another up the rocks, the safety of the one often depend ing on the strength and courage of the other. The bird-pole is also used with a small
net attached to it, in the capture of birds that are flying around. The Norw-gian fowlers sometimes remain for days on ledges where birds are abundant, sleeping in holes or clefts, and having food let down to them by a rope from above.
Still more perilous, if possible, is the mode of F. practiced where the precipices cannot be scaled. The fowler is let down by a rope, and hangs in mid-air, often at an elevation of several hundred feet, above rough rocks or roaring waves. and by means of his feet or of a pole, throws himself grit to such a distance from the face of the rock as to obtain a view of all its ledgeS and crannies, to which, with astonishing coolness and dexterity, he directs his course, often also catching the'birds that fly near him in the air. of the fowlers of St. Kilda, Wilson (Voyage Round the Coasts of Scotland and the Isles) remarks: " How one man (for such is the case), himself standing with time points of his toes upon the verge of a precipice many hundred feet deep, can, with such secure and unerring strength, sustain the entire weight of another man, bounding from point to point below him with irregular and frequent springs, is what a stranger cannot understand....But we ascertained there is never more than a single man above, supporting the weight of the one below. Each of these couples has two ropes. The rope which the upper man holds in his hands is fastened round the body and beneath the arms of him who descends, while another rope is pressed by the feet of the upper man, and is held in the hand of the lower." The second rope is for giving signals, and for sending up birds when captured. The principal rope used to be made of twisted raw cow-hide; it was so dc•able as to last for two generations, and was bequeathed as valuable property by father to son. Manilla hemp is now chiefly used instead. The practice differs also as to the number of comrades holding the rope above. ID the Faroe isles, where some of the meeipices are 1400 feet in height, the rope is usually held by a number of men. In some of the Scottish islands, fowlers have been adventurous enough to descend the cliffs unaided, fastening the rope for themselves to a stake driven into the ground above. The fowlers of the Faroe isles sometimes use the pole with net at the end, whilst suspended in the air. It is not unusual for the fowler, when he finds a ledge, or recess' in the precipice abounding in birds, to disen gage himself from the rope whilst he pursues his labors there; but when the precipice overhangs above, he is exposed to a great danger of the rope's escaping from his reach. A case is on record in which the only resource of the fowler was to make a desperate spring and catch the rope, which hung a few feet before him in the air, and this he succeeded in doing.
Rock-fowling is carried on at the Holm of Noss, a precipitous insular rock, separated from Noss, one of the Shetland isles, by a chasm of 65 ft. wide, and 160 ft. deep, over which ropes have been stretched, so that a cradle, or sparred box, can be made to pass along them, affording access to the grassy summit of the Holm, where a few sheep are occasionally fed, and where innumerable sea-birds make their nests.