DECOYS AND SWAN MARKS. 3 



and shoveller are more frequent visitors, but rarely breed with 

 us. There have been instances of the shoveller breeding 

 in Dorset, Kent, Norfolk, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, 

 and Yorkshire, and the bittern's nest is occasionally found 

 in some of our largest marshes, especially in Scotland and 

 Ireland. The Act of Henry VIII. exempts crows, choughs (jack- 

 daws), ravens, and buzzards, and their eggs, as " not comestible 

 or used to be eaten." This Act was repealed by 3 and 4 Ed. VI., 

 c. 7, on the grounds that the markets were then less supplied 

 with wild fowl than before the passing of the Act, and 

 " benefit was thereby taken away from the poor people 

 that were wont to live by their skill in taking of the said 

 fowl, whereby 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." Another Act, 

 9 Anne, c. 25, s. 4, similar in its object, after reciting " that a 

 great number of wild fowl of several kinds are destroyed by the 

 pernicious practice of driving and taking them by hayes, tunnels, 

 and other nets in the fens, lakes, and broadwaters, where fowl 

 resort at their moulting season, to the great damage and decay of 

 the breed of wild fowl, it enacts that " if any person makes use of 

 hayes, tunnels, and other nets between the 1st of July and the 

 1st of September to take any wild fowl shall on conviction forfeit 

 five shillings for each bird." 



It will be observed this Act was less draconic than that of 

 Henry VIII. ; the year's imprisonment is omitted, and only a fine 

 imposed, subject to a levy of distress. Willoughby in his 

 " Ornithologia" (1676) speaks of the destruction of wild fowl 

 during the moulting season in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and 

 Norfolk, and gives a detailed account of the mode of capture, 

 by the original V shaped enclosure and tunnel-net, men, 

 and boats ; and describes the slaughter of 4,000 wild fowl at 

 one drive. He speaks of a Dutch decoy or Dutch-kay as a new 

 artifice by which wild fowl are enticed, instead of being driven. 

 A rough line sketch of a decoy with three pipes accompanies the 



