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HISTORY OF 



some lake in the neighbourhood of a marsh, where there is at 

 the same time a cover of woods, and where insects are found in 

 great abundance. Lakes, therefore, with a marsh on one side, 

 and a wood on the other, are seldom without vast quantities of 

 wild-fowl ; and where a couple are seen at any time, that is a 

 sufficient inducement to bring hundreds of others. The ducks 

 flying in the air, are often lured down from their heights by the 

 loud voice of the mallard from below. Nature seems to have 

 furnished this bird with very particular faculties for calling. The 

 windpipe, where it begins to enter the lungs, opens into a kind 

 of bony cavity, where the sound is reilected as in a musical in- 

 strument, and is heard a great way off. To this call all the 

 stragglers resort ; and in a week or a fortnight's time, a lake, 

 that before was quite naked, is black with waterfowl that have 

 left their Lapland retreats, to keep company with our ducks who 

 never stirred from home. 



They generally choose that part of the lake where they are 

 inaccessible to the approach of the fowler, in which they all ap- 

 pear huddled together, extremely busy, and very loud. What 

 it is can employ them all the day it is not easy to guess. There 

 is no food for them at the place where they sit and cabal thus, 

 as they choose the middle of the lake ; and as for courtship, the 

 season for that is not yet come ; so that it is wonderful what 

 can so busily keep them occupied. Not one of them seems a 

 moment at rest. Now pursuing one another, now screaming, 

 then all up at once, then down again ; the whole seems one 

 strange scene of bustle, with nothing to do. 



They frequently go off in a more private manner by night to 

 feed in the adjacent meadows and ditches, which they dare not 

 venture to approach by day. In these nocturnal adventures they 

 are often taken ; for though a timorous bird, yet they are easily 

 deceived, and every spring seems to succeed in taking them. 

 But the greatest quantities are taken in decoys ; which, though 

 well known near London, are yet untried in the remoter parts 

 of the country. The manner of making and managing a decoy 

 is as follows : — 



A place is to be chosen for this purpose far remote irom the 

 common highway, and all noise of people. A decoy is best 

 where there is a large pond surrounded by a wood, and beyond 

 that a marshy and uncultivated country. When the place is 



