202 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



thick wood overhung the water, then came a bed of reeds^ 

 then a stretch of water-lilies. An arch of bent saplings 

 spanning a dyke was but the commencement of a sort of 

 network tunnel, about ten feet high, and eighteen broad at 

 the mouth, but gradually narrowing and decreasing in height, 

 until, at the end, it was only about two feet in diameter. 

 The last ten feet of it were detachable, being formed of net- 

 work stretched on hoops. The dyke over which the pipe 

 was erected, was very shallow, and, of course, narrowed as 

 the network did. It was about ninety yards long, and was 

 not straight, but curved from the lake to the right for a 

 quarter of a circle, so that when you were at one end of it, 

 the other was not visible. There were high banks on each 

 side, partly natural and partly artificial, and thickly clothed 

 with underwood, and the outer side of the curve, which was 

 the one from which the decoy was worked, was screened off 

 from the pipe by a series of reed screens or fences, placed 

 diagonally with their broad sides inclined towards the lake 

 and overlapping each other. Thus, any person approaching 

 the pipe in the proper manner would be perfectly invisible 

 from the lake, but would be able to see up the pipe with 

 ease. The screens were connected with each other by lower 

 cross fences called ' dog jumps.' " 



Ducks of all kinds feed chiefly at night, and fly abroad 

 for that purpose to pools, marshes, estuaries, and other likely 

 feeding- places, returning at daybreak to the quietest and 

 most sequestered lake they can find, where they sleep, rest, 

 and preen themselves during the day. Now, a decoy-pond is 

 designed to give them the absolute secrecy, quiet, and rest 

 which they like. Here they are never disturbed, even by 

 the destruction of hundreds of their companions, for the 

 decoying is carried on with so much secrecy and quiet that, 

 if a score of ducks are having their necks wrung at the 

 funnel of the pipe, the flock of fowl on the water not a 

 hundred yards away are blissfully ignorant of anything un- 

 usual happening. As night falls, the ducks fly away to their 



