74 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
Another and shorter list in the same vocabulary is entitled 
‘Nomina avium domesticarum,”’ and in this we find the 
stokdowe (Stockdove), and the names of Hawks used in 
falconry. These lists have their value in a century where 
there is so much dearth of exact information. 
It still seems best to adhere to a chronological order 
rather than attempt an arrangement of these early records 
under subjects. Although this method has a tendency to 
result in a string of more or less unconnected quotations, it 
best displavs what can be said of the early history of 
ornithology in the British Isles. Readers will, I think, admit 
that the alternative plan, namely, that of grouping the matter 
to hand under the names of species, or under subjects, such 
as Feasts, Household Accounts, Hawking, etc., is outweighed 
by the chronological method. The student of natural 
history in investigating this period cannot but heave a sigh 
at the lack of available information. As in the fourteenth 
century, so now, the notices of birds are singularly few and 
far between, and what we do get are imperfect, and of a 
very fragmentary character. Guns were practically unknown 
things in the fifteenth century, but, in default, the fowler 
knew how to use the net and the crossbow with a dexterity 
which would nowadays astonish us. Decoys as a means of 
taking Wild Ducks, which visited England five hundred years 
ago in far greater numbers than they do now, had come 
into use, but were possibly confined to the eastern counties. 
In his account of ‘‘ Decoys Past and Present ” before alluded 
to, Mr. J. Hoare informs us that the old Deeping Decoy 
at Croyland (or Crowland), in South Lincolnshire, was a sub- 
ject of dispute between the Lord of Liddel and the monastery 
in 1455. Also that on May 12th, 1432, a mob came armed with 
swords, sticks, bows and arrows, and took six hundred wild 
Geese (anches, query aucw) out of the Abbot’s decoy and did 
other damage to the amount of £100. The amount of wild- 
fowl taken in the East Anglian decoys must have been 
very large, if it is to be judged by more recent statistics, 
when the marshes had become less. They were probably 
not worked with a dog, but were what are described in 
Payne-Gallwey’s “ Book of Duck Decoys” (1886, p. 195) as 
Trap decoys, with doors at the end of the pipes which could 
