BRITISH BIRDS. 



295 



Willoughby, the Ducks, while in moult and unable 

 to fly, were driven by men in boats furnished with 

 long poles, with which they splashed the water 

 between long nets, stretched vertically across the 

 pools, in the shape of two sides of a triangle, into 

 lesser nets, placed at the point; and in this way, he 

 says, four thousand were taken at one driving, in 

 Deeping-Fen; and Latham has quoted an instance 

 of two thousand six hundred and forty-six being 

 taken in two days, near Spalding, in Lincolnshire; 

 but this mode of catching them while in moult is 

 now prohibited. 



