^^° WILD-FOWL DECOYS IN ESSEX. 



of the sea But poulterers take them then, and feed them with gravel and curds 



ind heir flelh th" I' ^^^^ °"^ ^° ^^""'■' ^'^ °'^^' ^° ^^^ '^-' ^ ^ ^-t" ghl 



and their flesh thus recruited is most delicious." 



.r..?H ^f "f ^^^^V'^r'"^ '°' ^ ^'^^''^' ^^ ^°"'"^^^' °^ ^^ O^ig'nally 



spelled Fowl Ness> ; but how long the gulls continued to breed there 

 I have been unable to discover. Some have supposed that the birds 

 referred to by Fuller were not gulls, but lapwings. Merrett for 

 instance, in his " Pinax " (1666), takes this view :— 



SrFuller. sT" " '"" ™'""' P-cise ad diem Divo Georgio sacrum. 



. Charleton also, in his " Onomastfcon Zoicon " (1668) makes a 

 somewhat smiilar statement, and names the island, " Nomen suum 

 toulness nempe, hoc est avium promontorium." 



Both Merrett and Charleton, however, appear to have been 

 deceived by the name - Puit^ which they took to refer to the plover 

 but which Fuller evidently intended to apply to the gull. 



Viewing the county in its present condition, intersected by railways 

 with thousands of acres of marsh land reclaimed, drained and 

 cultivated, we can form but a faint notion of what a paradise for wild- 

 fowl the Essex coast must have been before an increased population 

 and extended civilization narrowed the limits of their domain It is 

 difificult to realize the state of things which existed before the intro- 

 duction of shot guns in the sixteenth century, when wild-fowl were 

 killed with the cross-bow, with trained hawks, or with such kinds of 

 snares and nets as tne ingenuity of man at that period could devise • 

 and we have no better proof of their former abundance than the 

 number of decoys which once existed for their capture. Many 

 persons seem to be of opinion that decoys in England are amongst 

 the things of the past, and are surprised to learn that at the present 

 time there are about forty still in use in different parts of the country 

 while at least 140 others are known to have formerly existed. 



The great success which attended the working of decoys in the 

 olden time was due partly to the greater number of wild-fowl which 

 resorted to the places where they were constructed, partly to the 

 absolute stillness which prevailed in these out of the way spots, and 

 partly to the very ingenious contrivance which enabled the fowler to 

 capture a large number of birds at a time without in the least 



