.—Fowl, properly arranged, may be classed under three distinct heads; as DOMESTIC FOWL, consisting of cocks, hens, geese, and ducks. Wild fowl, comprehending, in the general sporting acceptation, only birds of flight and passage, as sea-gulls and geese, wild ducks, widgeon, teal, curlews, plover, woodcocks, and snipes. Game fowl, in the earliest Acts of Parliament, for its preservation, were extended to a very long list, including even the "Heron," the "Mallard," the "Duck," and the "Teal:" these, however, seem to be buried in a legal oblivion, and the whole at present to centre in the PHEASANT, the PARTRIDGE, the GROUSE, or red game, and the HEATH FOWL, or black game; the laws respecting which individually, will be found under their distinct and separate heads.
FOWLING
—is a term in some degree PROVINCIAL, being used in a different sense in one county to what it is in another. In fenny countries, FOWLING applies generally to the pursuit of water fowl, and the act of obtaining or taking them with either NET or GUN. In other parts, FOWLING appertains only to the sport of taking partridges with a NET and SETTING DOG. With FARMERS, and the middling class of rustics, particularly in remote parts, fowling and shooting are synonimous terms.
FOWLING-BAG, or NET.
—A bag or net is so called, which hangs by the side of a SPORTSMAN, suspended from a leathern belt passing round the neck over his shoulder, for the purpose of receiving such GAME as he may be able "to bag," or "bring to net."
FOWLING-PIECE
—has been generally used to imply a GUN of any description, so far as it was applicable to the purpose of killing GAME, or, in fact, WILD FOWL of any kind. It is, however, now more properly applied to those of five or six feet in the barrel, principally made use of for killing SEA and WATER FOWL, as Wild or Solan Geese, Wild Ducks, Widgeon, Teal, &c.
FOX
.—The FOX is that well-known native animal of this country whose instinctive cunning has rendered it proverbial: they are common in most parts of the kingdom, (as well as in Scotland,) but vary so much in size, that a late writer has extended his description to three different and distinct kinds. He says, "There are three varieties of fox with us, differing in form, but not in colour, except the cur FOX, whose tip of the tail is black: they are distinguished by the names of the GREYHOUND FOX, which is the tallest and boldest, and is chiefly found in the mountainous parts of England and Scotland, and will attack a well-grown sheep. The MASTIFF FOX is less, but his limbs more strongly formed. The CUR FOX is the least, the most common, and is the most pernicious to GAME, approaches nearer to the habitations of mankind, lurks about the out-houses of the FARMER, and destroys all the POULTRY it can get at."
Without descending to a minute examination of this "VARIETY," which probably may arise from the force of a too fertile imagination, or the different growth of FOXES in different counties, where the deficiency of food, or the difficulty of obtaining it, may occasion as great and proportional a variation in the size of the ANIMAL, as may be observed with the HORSES of Scotland and Wales, when brought into competition with those produced in a more fertile part of the kingdom; it must suffice to explain his natural history as of one species only.