WILD DUCK. 91 



fowl seldom work well, especially when it blows in. 

 If many pipes are made in the lake, they are so con- 

 structed as to suit different winds. The better to 

 entice the fowl into the pipe, hempseed is strewed 

 occasionally in the water. The season allowed by 

 act of parliament for catching these birds in this way 

 is from the latter end of October till February. 



" Particular spots or decoys, in the fen countries, 

 are let to the fowlers at a rent of from five to thirty 

 pounds per annum j and Pennant instances a season 

 in which thirty-one thousand two hundred Ducks, 

 including Teals and Wigeons, were sold in London 

 only, from ten of these decoys, near Wainfleet, in 

 Lincolnshire. Formerly, according to Willoughby, 

 the Ducks, while in moult and unable to fly, were 

 driven by men in boats furnished with long poles, 

 with which they splashed the water between long 

 nets stretched vertically across the pools, in the shape 

 of two sides of a triangle, into lesser nets placed at 

 the point, and in this way, he says, four thousand 

 were taken at one driving in Deeping fen ; and 

 Latham has quoted an instance of two thousand six 

 hundred and forty-six being taken in two days, near 

 Spalding in Lincolnshire ; but this manner of catching 

 them while in moult is now prohibited." 



Prodigious numbers of these birds are also taken 

 by decoys in Picardy in France, particularly on the 

 river Somme. It is customary there to wait for the 

 flocks' passing over certain known places ; when the 

 fowler, having ready a wicker cage containing a quan- 

 tity of tame birds, lets out one at a time, which en- 

 ticing the passengers within gun-shot, five or six are 



