580 
cross-bow to the fowling-piece of to-day ; hawking, as the mere 
pastime of the rich, would of course at no time compare with it. 
When decoys were first used in this country, so far as I have 
read, does not clearly appear. A very early date has been 
assigned to them, and it is said that they were common in England 
in the time of King John; mention is also made of them as 
forming the subject of litigation in Lincolnshire, in 1280, 1415, 
1432, &c. ; but I am inclined to think, from the way in which 
the operation is spoken of, that the means by which the great 
quantities of fowl were taken in those days, consisted of driving 
into nets constructed somewhat on the plan of the modern decoy, 
and not of enticing the birds to their destruction, as in the decoy 
proper. Various accounts of this method of taking fowl when 
too young to ily far, or during the moulting time, are extant. 
Willughby says, that sometimes as many as 400 boats were 
employed, and that 4000 mallards have been taken in one driving 
at Deeping Fen. To such an extent was the destructive practice 
carried, that in 1534 an Act was passed, prohibiting this mode of 
taking fowl between the last day of May and the last day of 
August ; but the method appears notwithstanding, to have been 
well known to Willughby in 1G7G ; and when Gough in his edition 
of Camden, says that about the year 1720, wild-fowl so abounded 
about Crowland, that in the month of August the owners some- 
times drove as many as 3000 ducks into a single net at one time, 
it appears to me that the end must have been accomplished by 
this illegal means. An Act of Parliament, 10 Geo. II., c. 32, 
referred to by Pennant (‘ Brit. Zool.’ ii., p. 503) also prohibits the 
taking of fowl from 1st June to 1st October. 
Spelman says, that Sir William Woodhouse, who lived in the 
reign of James I., “made amongst us ( primum a pud nos instiiuit) 
the first device for ducks, called by the foreign name of ‘a koye ! ” 
(Spcbnan’s English Works, 1727 edition — Posthumous Works — 
p. 153) ; whether he was the first to adopt the name as well I do 
not know, but this passage has often been quoted as proof that he • 
constructed the first decoy in England ; be this as it may, there 
can be no doubt that he introduced some important improvement, 
and it is quite possible that he was really the first to construct the 
decoy proper as distinguished from the old method of driving. It 
is not my intention, however, to enter into anything like a history 
