CHAPTER VI. 



THE HISTORY OF DECOYS. 



^Continued.'] 



" Thick as the feather' d flocks in close array, 

 O'er the wide fields of ocean wing their way ; 

 When from the rage of winter they repair 

 To warmer suns and more indulgent air." 



PITT. 



IT is easy to imagine that in centuries gone by, before the use of 

 fire-arms became general, the inhabitants of the fen countries endea- 

 voured to devise a more liberal scheme for capturing some of the 

 winter visitants of those regions, which assembled in such vast 

 flights ; but to take them seemed almost impossible, though it would 

 appear as if they were sent in such abundance by Providence, to be 

 food for those who might succeed in capturing them. No wonder, 

 then, that the ingenuity of man should, even in those days, have dis- 

 covered a stratagem whereby to lure the eagerly -sought aquatic tribe 

 within the meshes of a net, and thus to make them an easy prey.* 



At the present day decoys are not confined to England alone, but 

 are employed with much greater success in various parts of the 

 Netherlands, and other countries where the aquatic species resort. 

 From the effects of land-draining, which has been carried on to 

 such an extent of late years, the haunts of wild-fowl have been so 

 much disturbed, and in many places so entirely destroyed, that the 

 numbers now taken in England have greatly fallen oif ; a circum- 

 stance much to be regretted by English sportsmen. The extensive 

 fens of Lincolnshire formerly the great wild-fowl preserves of this 

 country are now drained and cultivated ; and there is no longer any 

 resting-place there for the wild-duck and her nestlings. These fens 

 formerly abounded with decoys. The most skilful decoyers in the 



* Daniel, in his " Rural Sports," gives an account of an attempt which was made 

 by the Maldon decoy-owners to stop the punters from shooting in the public river 

 within a certain distance of their ponds, and quotes the opinion of counsel taken 

 upon the subject. 



