BRITISH BIRDS. 291 



or in a calabash, &c., are attended with much 

 watching", toil, and fatigue, and are also compara- 

 tively trifling in point of success. 



The decoys* now in use are formed by cutting 

 pipes or tapering ditches, widened and deepened as 

 they approach the water in various semicircular 



* For the following account of the manner of taking Wild-fowl 

 in decoys, this work is indebted to Mr. Bonfellow, of Stockton, in 

 Norfolk : 



" In the lakes where they resort, the most favourite haunts of the 

 fowl are observed: then in the most sequestered part of this haunt, 

 they cut a ditch about four yards across at the entrance, and about 

 fifty or sixty yards in length, decreasing gradually in width from the 

 entrance to the farther end, which is not more than two feet wide. 

 It is of a circular form, but not bending much for the first ten yards. 

 The banks of the lake for about ten yards on each side of this ditch. 

 (or pipe as it is called) are kept clear from reeds, coarse herbage, 

 &c., in order that the fowl may get on them to sit and dress them- 

 selves. Across this ditch, poles on each side, close to the edge of 

 the ditch, are driven into the ground, and the tops bent to each other 

 and tied fast. These poles at the entrance form an arch, from the 

 top of which to the water is about ten feet. This arch is made to 

 decrease in height, as the ditch decreases in width, till the farther 

 end is not more than eighteen inches in height. The poles are 

 placed about six feet from each other, and connected together by 

 poles laid lengthways across the arch and tied together. Over them 

 a net with meshes sufficiently small to prevent the fowl getting 

 through, is thrown across, and made fast to a reed fence at the 

 entrance, and nine or ten yards up the ditch, and afterwards strongly 

 pegged to the ground. At the further end of the pipe, a tunnel net 

 (as it is called) is fixed, about four yards in length, of a round form, 

 and kept open by a number of hoops about eighteen inches in 

 diameter, placed at a small distance from each other to keep it dis- 

 tended. Supposing the circular bend of the pipe be to the right 

 when you stand with your back to the lake, on the left hand side a 

 number of reed fences are constructed, called shootings, for the pur- 

 pose of screening from sight the decoy-man, and in such a manner, 

 that the fowl in the decoy may not be alarmed, while he is driving 

 those in the pipe: these shootings are about four yards in length, 



