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however, to learn anything with regard to it, except that it 
certainly has not been worked during the past fifty years. 
In the Bluestone Hall plantation at Cawston , there was formerly 
a decoy, but when it was last used I cannot ascertain. Captain 
"\V. E. G. L. Bulwer, in reply to Mr. Norgate’s inquiries, states 
that it was there at the beginning of the present century ; but 
he thinks it was probably done away with by his grandfather, 
General Bulwer, when he headed the pond and enlarged the water. 
Captain Bulwer doubts whether there is anyone living who could 
give any information about it ; and the only person he names 
as likely to do so, — a man who, he says, “remembered feeding his 
cow where the great pond now is,” — has recently died. 
In Gunton Park there was formerly a decoy; it was constructed 
in 1803 or 1804, by William, second Lord Suffield, but when 
dismantled, I do not know. There are three pipes, and thirty 
acres of water. Here also, as at Mautby, there is a heronry. 
Again, returning to the coast, and within a few miles of the sea, 
we come to Hempstead ; where a very productive decoy, in the 
possession of the Gurney family, was worked up to about the year 
1845 ; when the decoyman (not Bicliard Skelton, but his successor) 
having been detected in carrying on an illicit still, hidden in the 
woods, by means of which he converted the pheasants’ barley into 
whiskey for his own use, was, of course, summarily dismissed, 
and the decoy, having fallen into dilapidation, was never after- 
wards "worked. Here, Bichard Skelton, son of the Winterton 
man, was long decoyman ; and I have been told, by a person who 
knew him, that the decoy was very productive, as many as three or 
four hundred ducks having been taken at once. No decoy book, so 
far as I can learn, exists, and of course nothing will ever be known 
about the number and species of the fowl taken, and even those 
few who remember the decoy will soon pass away. 
Not far from Hempstead, and nearer to the coast, was a decoy 
constructed at Longhorn, by the late Captain Marryatt, B.N. In 
the year 1854, after Captain Marryatt’s death, the property was 
purchased by Mr. S. F. Bippingall, and the decoy dismantled. 
The site of the decoy is now a field, with a small stream running 
through it : plantation, lake, and decoy — all gone. The Nov. E. W. 
Dowell, tolls me, that he has several times seen this decoy worked, 
and that he thinks the proportion of fowl taken was about ; 
