538 
doctored with the same, and many score of them succumbed ; but 
it was found that the gulls took the bait too. The gannet of 
course was safe, for he is exclusively piscivorous. 
I hope that my paper has not been unduly spun out, but the 
subject was too interesting to admit of any abridgment. The 
gannet is one of the most remarkable birds in ornithology, and the 
island-rock : which from time immemorial has been its chief 
home is replete with historic associations. The Great Northern 
Railway takes the traveller within easy distance of it, and no 
painter, archaeologist, or naturalist, who has a day to spare, if it is 
in the summer time, should pass by the Drem station without 
stopping to see the old Rock and its feathered inhabitants. Of 
the former I may say, Primus inter pares, and of the latter, Primi 
inter (mines. 
II. 
NORFOLK DECOYS. 
By Thomas Southwell, F.Z.S., Hon. Sec. 
Read 26 th November , 1878. 
“ The ago when decoys were prevalent,” says Folkard, “ may be 
appropriately termed the ‘middle age’ of wild-fowling; all previous 
systems of taking wild-fowl by nets, snares, lime-strings, lime- 
twigs, lime-rods, and otherwise, sink into insignificance when 
compared with the peculiar ingenuities of the decoy, and the 
subsidiary schemes of the flight-pond.” Had he said, that with 
decoys the art of fowling reached the acme of perfection, I think 
he would have been more correct ; for, although all methods 
of ■wild-fowling depend in a more or less degree, for their 
success, upon the skill and ingenuity of the fowler, added to 
a thorough knowledge of the haunts and habits of the quarry, 
still, if numbers bo taken as the standard of success, all the earlier 
modes of taking fowl are as far inferior to the decoy, as the 
