428 
XXIII. 
Eccles 
n*- Larlingford 
Nov k - 20. [1S41] 
My dear Sir 
I thank you for the Fieldfares’ and Redwings’ eggs, 
when I saw you in the spring I told you that I would, if possible, 
send you some notes from a gentleman* who is a practical decoy 
man relative to the [management of decoys. I now enclose them 
and shall he glad if they prove of any use to you. You will 
observe that he speaks of a small extent of water, three or four 
acres, the reason is this if confined in extent you can almost always 
work fowl but if a large lake is made a decoy, there may be 
thousands of Ducks on the water but none near enough to a pipe to 
regard the dog or the decoy Ducks. 
Yours very sincerely 
R D: Lubbock 
W. Yarrell Esq e - 
Ryder St. S t; James 8 
London. 
* This evidently refers to the late Mr. John Kerrison who died at Ran worth 
on the 12th of September, 1866. He was, in early life, a midshipman, and after- 
wards junior officer in the East India Company’s service, from which he retired, 
on his marriage, and from the commencement of his residence at Ranworth 
Hall in 1838 (the estate having come down to him through his grandfather. John 
Kerrison, lord of the manor of Ranworth and Panxworth) ; devoted him- 
self, most successfully, to agricultural pursuits and the enjoyment of field- 
sports, in most of which his skill was only equalled by his enthusiasm. He 
restored and greatly enlarged the decoy at Ranworth, and, in this little 
known and peculiar, art his proficiency (from whatever source acquired) 
was second only to that of the shrewdest “professional” from the fens of 
Lincolnshire. Indeed, his old friend and fellow-sportsman, Lubbock, in 
treating of decoys in his Fauna of Norfolk, admits that to Kerrison who 
“ worked his own decoy,” he owed whatever insight he had into the system. 
