My Last Day in the Fen. 253 



was the largest. They used to begin working them about six weeks 

 before Christmas, and continued until four weeks after. Five-and- 

 twenty years ago, the decoy-men, however, were complaining of 

 the scarcity of fowl, so I should suppose at the present day the trade 

 cannot be worth following. 



The principal ducks in this fen were the common wild duck, the 

 pochard, widgeon, and teal, now and then a few golden-eye, and I 

 have killed an occasional pintail and shoveller. 



It is the opinion of many antiquarians that at the time of the 

 Romans this fen-land was one vast forest, and old De la Prynne 

 even supposes that the fall of the trees was the proximate cause of 

 the formation of the turf and soil, which accumulated by degrees 

 around the fallen trees, till additions year after year produced the 

 fen-land as we now see it. Certainly old trunks are occasionally 

 dug up in this and many other of the fens. Probably, in the days 

 of bold Robin Hood, Rockingham Forest, which now comes within 

 twenty miles of the fen, extended much farther j and I well recol- 

 lect a friend of mine, when digging out for a boat-house by the 

 side of the Nene, finding, about four feet below the surface, a curi- 

 ous old buckhorn-hafted knife, and a single horn of a red deer (not 

 a fallow), doubtless left there centuries before by some of the 

 merry outlaws who then roamed at will over the forest of Rocking- 

 ham and merry Sherwood. As it is, there was but one tree of any 

 magnitude standing in the Holme fen at my day, and this was a 

 huge willow on the western bank of the mere, which had evidently 

 braved the blasts of centuries. 



Following a familiar train of ideas, the mind instinctively wanders 

 back from the scenes of our own time to the days of yore, when 



" Unheeded was the Manton by the partridge and the quail, 

 And o'er each lazy inland mere were wild ducks wont to sail." 



But although the boom of the modern punt even then never broke 

 the stillness of the fen, the sports of the field were probably then 

 carried on with as much zest as at the present day, and the " Heigh- 



