92 
MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON WILD-FOWL DRIVING. 
It will be observed from the above interesting record that so late 
as the year 1728, in Deeping Fen the enormous number of 13,032 
Ducks were driven in three days, and that 1,860 were secured by 
“ one push into the nets ! ” and this notwithstanding the severe 
enactment of 1710 above quoted. 
Sir Ralph Gallwey, in his ‘ Book of Duck Decoys,’ explains the 
method by which the moulting drakes and “flappers,” not fully 
able to fly, were driven by a vast number of men in boats, and 
armed with sticks with which they thrashed the reeds and water, 
into a vast horse-shoe shaped arrangement of nets ending in pipes 
similar to those in a Decoy, and he has reproduced a rare old print 
depicting the curious scene, so that I need say nothing more as 
to the method, but the fowl had not only to contend with these 
organised attacks, for in a communication to the Royal Society 
(published in 1696) giving “An Account of several Observables 
in Lincolnshire, not taken notice of in Camden or any other 
Author,” Mr. Christopher Merrett, “Surveyor of the Port of 
Boston”* after mentioning the profits realised by the Duck, 
Mallard, and Teal, taken in the three Decoys at Wainfleet, the 
fowl from each of which he said were sent twice weekly between 
Michaelmas and Lady-day to London by men on horseback, 
many times forty or fifty dozen at once; he adds: “About 
Midsummer (when moultering time is) several Persons, some from 
Pleasure, others for Profit, go in small Boats among the Reeds, 
and with long Poles knock them down, they not being able to 
Swim or Fly from them.” f 
The Act of 25 H. VIII., c. 11 (1534), intituled, “An Acte agenst 
the Destruccyon of Wyld-fowle,” sets forth that there had been 
plenty of wild-fowl, as Ducks, Mallards, Wigeons, Teals, Wild 
Geese, but that in consequence of divers persons inhabiting the 
districts where wild-fowl breed, having in the summer season, “ at 
suche tyme as the seid olde fowle be mowted and not replenysshed 
with feathers to flye, nor the yonge fowle fully featherede perfyctly 
to flye, have, by certen nettes and other ingyns and polycies, yearly 
* This was probably a son of Dr. Christopher Merrett, the author of the 
* Pinax Re rum Britannicarum,’ 1667, who states in the “ Leotori Salutem ” 
to that book that he had more than one son, and that the younger of them 
was named Christopher. Dr. Merrett died in 1696. 
f Phil. Trans. 1696, vol. xix. p. 343. 
