HISTORY OF DECOYS. 69 



here and there with a little patch of corn or pasture, but for the most part 

 consisting of wild and well-nigh pathless morass. 



The original drainage scheme that was completed in 1652 by William 

 Earl of Bedford must not be imagined to have caused the formation of 

 firm ground, such as is now to be seen in the Fens. The cuts, dykes, 

 banks and sluices and other contrivances then made may be said merely to 

 have turned what was in winter an inland sea into a vast marsh, in the 

 hollows of which such meres as Whittlesey and Ramsey were formed by 

 the surplus waters that could not reach the sea. 



The Fens, especially those of East Lincoln, were not finally drained 

 or really cultivated until the close of the last century : and up to as late as 

 1822 immense extents of wild Fen and marsh still existed here and there 

 all over the Bedford Level. Whittlesey and Ramsey meres and their 

 immediate Fens not being drained till thirty years later. 



And still the old Fens, of which the Great Level is formed, require 

 careful supervision. For as they are dried, improved, and drained, so they 

 gradually fall below the level of the sea and rivers, and the destruction of a 

 sea-wall by a high tide and onshore gale, or the flooding of a river, are 

 liable to lay (as occurred in 1862) many thousand acres under water in the 

 course of a few hours. 



There are even now engineers who look upon it as no impossibility, 

 by an unlucky combination of wind and tide, for the " Great Bedford 

 Level " to be again flooded as of yore, and who point to similar catas- 

 trophes in Holland as a warning for watchfulness. 



In these days the so-called Fens are but great flats of level grain fields 

 or meadows, divided by ditches instead of by walls or hedges. They are 

 intersected by numerous perfectly straight canals that run like silver threads 

 into distant space, and into these the ditches and minor drains are led. 



It is probable that all the eastern county Decoys were constructed 

 after the first great drainage of the Fens was completed in 1652, when it 

 was seen what numberless wildfowl, as was but natural, resorted from all 

 parts to the marshes and ooze left by the out-driven floods. 



Previous to this the ducks were habitually driven into nets, as previously 

 described. A practice continued till much later times on such meres as 

 were formed here and there by the receding waters. 



The Bedford Level, consisting of 400,000 acres, is divided into the 



