DECOYS SHOOTING ON THE COAST. 109 



sportsman and the lover of the picturesque must 

 yield to the irresistible pressure of agricultural 

 improvement. The common wild duck, the 

 wigeon, and the teal furnish the main supply of 

 the wildfowl captured in this way. Some notion 

 of the extraordinary productiveness of the Lin- 

 colnshire decoys may be formed from a fact 

 recorded by Pennant, that in one season 31,200 

 ducks were sent by ten of them to the London 

 market. 



Such of my readers as desire to understand 

 the exact nature of a decoy, and the complicated 

 details of its structure and management, will find 

 an interesting and elaborate account in the Rev. 

 R. Lubbock's ' Fauna of Norfolk,' elucidated by 

 several explanatory sketches and illustrations ; 

 without which, indeed, the subject cannot be 

 thoroughly comprehended. 



To those who are anxious to be initiated into 

 all the mysteries of wild fowl shooting on the 

 coast, Colonel Hawker's ' Instructions ' afford a 

 mine of information. For my own part, although 

 I have in former days occasionally shivered behind 

 a stanchion gun for the best part of a long frosty 

 night, in the shallow waters of a creek, and passed 

 many an hour on the borders of a lake near the 

 mouth of a river, awaiting the return, at early 

 dawn, of wild ducks and wigeon from their feed- 



