6 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS. 



on either side of them, all of course tending to guide the fowl toward 

 the net they were subsequently driven into as a huddled crowd. See 

 illustration, page 5. 



As, however, this method of taking fowl swept them off wholesale, 

 they naturally decreased in certain localities. As years went on the habit 

 became generally common, till at last an Act was passed prohibiting it. 

 This Act came in force in 1534, and debarred fowl being taken between 

 the 31st of May and the 31st of August in every year. 



Still wildfowl protection* was not strictly enforced in those days, we 

 may be sure, for the fen country, where this driving used principally to 

 take place was well-nigh a terra incogitita. Driving ducks, however, was 

 continued down to 1676, as at that date Willughby alludes to it, as also 

 does Gough still later, in 1720, when he speaks of the 3,000 ducks being 

 taken at Croyland at one time in a single net. This might not be an 

 infringement of the law, as the latter writer speaks of the owners of the 

 Decoy having had this large take of fowl. By owners, I consider were 

 meant the people who were proprietors of, or paid taxes on, some particular 

 piece of water which they reserved for wildfowl, as a Decoy is now. 



There can be no doubt that driving ducks into a tunnel of net closed 

 at one end was the original method by which they were caught, and that 

 it suggested the formation in the first instance of the " cage," and later of 

 the modern Decoy as now worked and constructed. For as the fens were 

 drained, land apportioned, and the fowl became less abundant and tame, 

 and firearms were improved and more used, people found they could not 

 succeed in taking the birds as in days past. 



If the ducks were not in sufficient numbers or had learnt to avoid the 



* I find this protection was afterwards withdrawn, which no doubt accounts for the practice of 

 driving ducks being alluded to in more recent times. For it appears that in the fourth year of the 

 reign of Edward VI. (1551) the Act was repealed, but it was at the same time provided that no 

 person should destroy or take away the eggs of any wildfowl The recital of this latter Act is as 

 follows, and for its quaint wording and allusions is worthy of insertion : — " Whereas in the xxv year 

 of the reign of your Majestie's father of most famous memory. King Henry the Eighth, an Act was 

 made containing two branches, whereof the one was against the taking of wildfowl between May 31 

 and August 31 with any nets or engines upon a pain limited therefor as in the second statute more 

 largely doth appear : and forasmuch as the occasion of the second branch appcareth sithen to have 

 risen but on a private case, and that no manner of common commodity is sithen perceived to have 

 grown of the same, being notably by daily experience, found and known, that there is at this present 

 less plenty of fowl brought into the markets than there was before the making of the said Act, which 

 is taken to come of the punishment of God, whose benefit was thereby taken away from the poor 

 people that were wont to live by their skill in taking of the said fowl, wherebye they were wont at 

 that time to sustain themselves with their poor households, to the great saving of other kinds of 

 victual, of which aid they are now destitute, to their great and extreme impoverishing." 



