THE TAME DUCK. 465 



appetite and pleasant company ; the living birds belong more 

 properly to our department. 



Of White Ducks, the best is the Aylesbury, with its un- 

 spotted snowy plumage and yellow legs and feet. It is large 

 and excellent for the table, but not larger or better than seve- 

 ral others. They are assiduous mothers and nurses, especially 

 after the experience of two or three seasons. A much smaller 

 race of White Ducks is imported from Holland ; their chief merit, 

 indicated by the title of Call Duck, consists in their incessant 

 loquacity.* They are useful only to the proprietors of ex- 

 tensive or secluded waters, as enticers of passing wild birds to 

 alight and join their society. But in Norfolk, where the 

 management of Decoys is as well understood as anywhere, the 

 trained Decoy Ducks are selected to resemble the Mallard, 

 male and female, as nearly as possible. Both systems are 

 found to answer; the wild-coloured traitors arouse no sus- 

 picion, while the conspicuous Dutchmen excite fatal attention 

 and curiosity. When the newly-arrived immigrants, although 

 bent on a pleasure excursion from the north, are listless, or 

 suspicious of their company, and will not enter the Decoy, 

 they may often be made to do so by the sudden display of a 

 red handkerchief, or the rapid appearance and disappearance 



* "The chief point to be attended to in England, is to get, if pos- 

 sible, some young wild Ducks bred up and pinioned. Or, by way 

 of a make-shift, to select tame birds which are the most clamorous, 

 even if their colour should not be like the wild ones. But in France 

 you have seldom any trouble to do this, as the Ducks used in that 

 country are partly of the wild breed ; and three French Ducks, like 

 three Frenchmen, will make about as much noise as a dozen English. 

 The Italians, in order to make their call-birds noisy, for a ' roccalo,' 

 burn out their eyes with a hot needle, a practice at which I am sure 

 my English readers would shudder ; though the translation of what 

 they say in Italy is, that < these are the happiest birds in the world , 

 always singing.'" Colonel Hawker's Instructions, p. 367. 



