550 
remembers the decoy being worked ; but it is probable that it Was 
disused about the time of the enclosure of the common, sixty-three 
years ago. An old man, eighty-five years of age, who has resided 
near the plantation all his life, tells Mr. Bannister, that the 
common was generally under water, and that ducks used to resort 
to the neighbourhood up to the time of the enclosure ; he, however, 
can give no information as to the working of the decoy. 
Such are the scanty records, I have been able to collect, of the 
disused decoys of Norfolk ; doubtless, although the present list is 
by no means a short one, there may have been others which I have 
failed to discover, and some of those enumerated may have proved 
failures, and been used only for a short time. With regard to the 
dates given, it must be remembered that my information has been 
generally from hearsay, and that although I have been at the 
greatest pains to check one account against another, I cannot in all 
cases vouch for their accuracy. Where there is nothing to fix the 
dates, I fear, they must generally be taken as approximate, but I 
do not think they will be found to err very greatly. It is not 
unlikely there are people now living who could add greatly to the 
information I have been able to collect, but it is remarkable how 
rapidly all knowledge of this once important branch of industry — 
although a thing of only the immediate past— is fading away, we 
can only look upon the decoys now working (in our county at least) 
in the light of duck preserves, worked by the proprietors, more for 
sport than profit. Of some I have mentioned, really nothing is 
known, of others very little, and the imperfect statistics relating 
to the Eanworth decoy, which was worked by its proprietor, 
is the only instance, I can find, in which such a record of 
the fowl taken in any of the disused decoys, was kept. This 
is, no doubt, owing to the secret nature of the decoyman’s 
occupation, which could only be pursued in solitude, and 
his interests led him to keep the results of his operations 
to himself. I am happy to say that the few decoys now 
existing in Norfolk, are all worked by their owners, who are 
actuated by no such motive, and we may still hope for some useful 
information, even though it be at the eleventh hour. The existence 
of the remaining decoys, however, is precarious in the extreme, 
should their proprietors prefer to shoot the ducks rather than to 
decoy them, as has frequently been the case of late, these ancient 
