WILD DUCK. 189 



resembled the gallinaceous tribe, was clearly nothing 

 more than a case of accidental monstrosity.* 



WILD DUCKS. 



DURING a short stay in the neighbourhood of 

 Crowland in Lincolnshire, in August 1843, I was 

 taken by a friend to see a duck decoy near that 

 place. As decoys are now less plentiful than 

 formerly, as well as becoming yearly less and 

 less profitable, from the extensive drainage and 

 cultivation of marsh lands, I was pleased with the 

 opportunity of seeing one. This decoy covered 

 twenty acres, but had not more than three acres of 

 water in the middle. At the time of our visit, there 

 were only a few wild ducks in it, supposed to be 

 young birds that had been bred in the fens in the 

 neighbourhood. The regular season, we were in- 

 formed, begins in November, and ends in February 

 or March. The best weather for taking the ducks 

 is moderate frost and snow : in very mild wet winters 

 they are too shy. The occupier of this decoy told 

 us that, in his father's time, he had known as many 

 as seven hundred dozen birds taken there in one 

 season. This is, perhaps, as large a quantity from 

 one decoy, during a single season, as any on record. 

 Pennant mentions thirty-one thousand two hundred 



* The above is the substance of some notes I made at the 

 time of seeing these ducks. A short communication respecting 

 them was afterwards published by some other person in Loudon's 

 Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. vii. p. 516. 



