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A HISTORY OF 



vast quantities of wild-fowl ; and where a 

 couple are seen at any time, that is a sufficient 

 inducement to bring hundreds of others. The 

 ducks flying in the air, are often lured down 

 from their heights by the loud voice of the 

 mallard from below. Nature seems to have 

 furnished this bird with very pariicular facul- 

 ties for calling. The windpipe, where it be- 

 gins to enter the lungs, opens into a kind of 

 bony cavity, where the sound is reflected as in 

 a musical instrument, and is heard a great 

 way off. To this call all the stragglers resort; 

 and in a week or a fortnight's time, a lake, 

 that before was quite naked, is black with 

 water-fowl, that have left their Lapland re- 

 treats to keep company with our ducks who 

 never stirred from home. 



They generally choose that part of the lake 

 where they are inaccessible to the approach of 

 the fowler, in which they all. appear huddled 

 together, extremely busy, and very loud. 

 What it is can employ them all the day is not 

 easy to guess. There is no food for them at 

 the place where they sit and cabal thus, as 

 they choose the middle of the lake ; and as 

 for courtship, the season for that is not yet 

 come; so that it is wonderful what can so 

 busily keep them occupied. Not one of them 

 seems a moment at rest. Now pursuing one 

 another, now screaming, then all up at once, 

 then down again ; the whole seems one strange 

 scene of bustle, with nothing to do. 



They frequently go off in a more private 

 manner by night to feed in the adjacent mea- 

 dows and ditches, which they dare not ven- 

 ture to approach by day. In these nocturnal 

 adventures they are often taken ; for, though 

 a timorous bird, yet they are easily deceived, 

 and every spring seems to succeed in taking 

 them. But the greatest quantities are taken 

 in decoys; which, though well known near 

 London, are yet untried in the remoter parts 

 of the country. The manner of making and 

 managing a decoy is as follows. 



A place is to be chosen for this purpose far 

 remote from the common highway, and all 

 noise of people. A decoy is best where there 

 is a large pond surrounded by a wood, and be- 

 yond that a marshy and uncultivated country. 

 When the place is chosen, the pool, if possible, 

 is to-be planted round with willows, unless a 

 wood answers the purposes of shading it on 

 every side. On the south and north side of 



this pool are two, three, or four ditches or 

 channels, made broad towards the pool, and 

 growing narrower till they end in a point. 

 These channels are to be covered over with 

 nets, supported by hooped sticks bending from 

 one side to the other ; so that they form a 

 vault or arch growing narrower and narrower 

 to the point, where it is terminated by a tunnel- 

 net, like that in which fish are caught in weirs. 

 Along the banks of these channels so netted 

 over, which are called pipes, many hedges are 

 made of reeds slanting to the edge of the chan- 

 nel, the acute angles to the side next the pool. 

 The whole apparatus, also, is to be hidden 

 from the pool by a hedge of reeds along the 

 margin, behind which the fowler manages his 

 operations. The place being fitted in this 

 manner, the fowler is to provide himself with 

 a number of wild ducks made tame, which 

 are called decoys. These are always to be 

 fed at the mouth or entrance of the pipe, and 

 to be accustomed to come at a whistle. 



As soon as the evening is set in, the decoy 

 rises, as they term it, and the wild-fowl feed 

 during the night. If the evening be still, the 

 noise of their wings, during their flight, is 

 heard at a very great distance, and produces 

 no unpleasing sensation. The fowler, when 

 he finds a fit opportunity, and sees his decoy 

 covered with fowl, walks about the pool, and 

 observes into what pipe the birds gathered in 

 the pool may be enticed or driven. Then 

 casting hemp-seed, or some such seed as will 

 float on the surface of the water, at the en- 

 trance, and up along the pipe, he whistles to 

 his decoy-ducks, who instantly obey the sum- 

 mons, and come to the entrance of the pipe, 

 in hopes of being fed as usual. Thither also 

 they are followed by a whole flock of wild 

 ones, who little suspect the danger preparing 

 against them-. Their sense of smelling, how- 

 ever, is very exquisite ; and they would soon 

 discover their enemy, but that .the fowler al- 

 ways keeps a piece of turf burning at his nose, 

 against which he breaths, and this prevents 

 the effluvia .of his person from reaching their 

 exquisite senses. The wild -ducks, therefore, 

 pursuing the decoy-ducks, are led into the 

 broad mouth of the channel or pipe, nor have 

 the least suspicion of the man, who keeps 

 hidden behind one of the hedges. When they 

 have got up the pipe, however, finding it grow 

 more and more narrow, they begin to suspect 



