NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



of fowl, when the bittern boomed from every marsh, 

 and ruffs and reeves bred plentifully amid the wastes 

 of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, and Somerset, Lincolnshire alone could count 

 no fewer than thirty-nine decoys. Essex possessed 

 twenty-nine and Norfolk twenty-six. But as England 

 has become drained and populated, wildfowl are no 

 longer to be numbered by the scores of thousand as 

 they used to be before the fens and marshes were re- 

 claimed. Decoy after decoy has vanished from the 

 scene, or lies dismantled and forlorn, shorn of its 

 former interest and its former prosperity. The hardy 

 fen-man has been driven to other and more prosaic 

 occupations than that of wildfowling. Some few 

 decoys will continue to remain to us for a generation 

 or two longer ; but they are doomed to vanish, and the 

 end of the present century will probably have seen the 

 last of them. To me, as to every other lover of nature, 

 an old decoy, such as I have attempted to describe, 

 must always possess a melancholy, yet an abiding, 

 interest. 



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