BIRDS 371 



brought some Wood-cockes, 6d.' The question naturally arises, 

 by what means Woodcock were obtained in such considerable 

 quantities as the Naworth records evidence? Undoubtedly, 

 some of the Woodcock were taken in nets, according to the 

 Italian fashion. It was only in 1645 that John Evelyn 

 remarked of the Villa Borghesi near Eome : ' Here they had 

 huns: larsre netts to catch wood-cocks.' 1 But the method had 

 been adopted in Cumberland some years earlier. In the 

 accounts of Lord William Howard for 1624, we find among the 

 expenses incurred in Oct. 23: 'To Eob Stapleton for hempe 

 yarn in march for making a drawing nett, v s ., and for iij hankes 

 of yarn for a cockshott nett at Brampton parke, iiij s . 27. To 

 Mr. Skelton for ij hankes of yarn for the cock net, ijs.' This 

 device is obviously unsuited to an open country, and was not 

 the kind of fowling most adopted by the natives of Lakeland. 

 They preferred to rely upon the simple and less expensive 

 device of snaring Woodcock. 



Pennant himself, though a stranger, noticed the practice as 

 adopted in the neighbourhood of Windermere in 1772: 'See 

 on the plain part of these hills numbers of springes for Wood- 

 cocks, laid between tufts of heather, with avenues of small 

 stones on each side to direct these foolish birds into the snares, 

 for they will not hop over the pebbles. Multitudes are taken 

 in this manner in the open weather, and sold on the spot for 

 sixteen pence or twenty pence a couple (about 20 years ago at 

 sixpence or sevenpence), and sent to the all-devouring capital 

 by the Kendal Stage.' 2 Wholesale destruction, coupled with 

 the loss of much natural wood, could not but affect the numbers 

 of birds in the long-run ; such was actually the case, for 

 Hutchinson wrote in (or prior to) 1794: 'We were informed 

 that formerly so great an abundance of woodcocks frequented 

 the woods in this manor [Muncaster], that, by a special custom, 



1 Diary of John Evelyn, Ed. Bohn, p. 144. 



2 Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 36. In one of the Tales of the Lakes, 

 published in the Lonsdale Magazine in 1822, called ' Michael,' and written 

 in 1821, an aged native of Windermere is represented as saying: 'The 

 few shillings I had were obtained by catching Patridges and Woodcocks 

 in sprents, for they had not found it out at London then that all the birds 

 belonged to the gentleman.' (p. 13.) 



