6 DECOYS AND SWAN MARKS. 



Britain, of which no less than 81 are relegated to these three 

 counties ; of these nine only are now in use. 



The limited number of ducks taken annually at the 

 Abbotsbury decoy may to a great extent be attributable 

 to its proximity to so large an expanse of water as the 

 Fleet, supplying an unlimited amount of food, and un- 

 molested by gunners. The surroundings of the Abbotsbury 

 decoy (which has four pipes) seem to invite the visit of every 

 duck as it passes over the peaceful solitude of this charming nook 

 of old Dorset. The Morden decoy has been disused since 1856, 

 but when in use upwards of 7,000 wild fowl have been taken in 

 one season ; it is surrounded by a wild tract of moorland, and is 

 about four acres in extent, of which the pond occupies half; the 

 rest is planted with oak, birch, willow, and alder. It has four 

 pipes. The Abbotsbury decoy is of great antiquity, and was probably 

 established long before the Reformation, at the time when the lands 

 to which it is attached belonged to the abbots of the monastery, 

 who were the owners also of the splendid swannery, and who enjoyed 

 the special privilege granted by the Crown to take within certain 

 limits all swans not marked with the licensed swan-marks cut in 

 the upper mandible and registered by the Eoyal swanherd, who 

 kept a book of swan-marks, and no swan-marks were permitted to 

 interfere with old ones, and no swanherd could affix a mark except 

 in the presence of the king's swanherd or deputy. The sign of 

 the two-necked swan is a corruption of the swan with two nicks, or 

 marks on the bill. 



The following note on swan-marks appeared in the Athenaeum 

 of 18th August, 1877 : " The manuscript department of the British 

 Museum has lately acquired for the Egerton library two interesting 

 manuscripts illustrating the marking of swans. The first is a small 

 quarto-paper book of 89 folios, written apparently in a hand of the 

 seventeenth century. It commences with an alphabetical list of 

 the owners of the marks, among whom appear the King and 

 Queen, the Dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Richmond, Earls of 

 Huntingdon, Essex, Oxford, Sussex, Surrey, and Leicester, with 



