45 6 
APPENDIX. 
For days not a bird will be seen in that quarter, either on the water 
or the landings. 
A very simple mode of decoying was successfully practised by a 
medical gentleman of my acquaintance in the island of South Uist, 
one of the Hebrides. When in pursuit of wild ducks, he would take 
a tame duck out to the lakes, with a long string tied to one of its legs. 
By pulling this string, when desirable, he would make it quack, and 
thus attract others around it. In this way he frequently . obtained 
several at a shot ; on one occasion the tame duck fell a victim at the 
same time with five or six wild ones. The tame ducks here are very 
much crossed with the wild birds, and consequently resemble them in 
plumage. 
The preceding is even more simple than the following manner of 
decoying Canada geese in the United States, as narrated by Sir Charles 
Lyell. “ On our way back from Plymouth to Boston, we passed near 
the village of East Weymouth, by a decoy pond, where eight wild 
geese, called Canada geese, had been shot since the morning. Swim- 
ming in the middle of a sheet of water, was a tame goose, having one 
leg tied by a string to a small leaden weight, and near it were a row 
of wooden imitations of geese, the sight of which, and the cries of 
the tame goose, attract the wild birds. As soon as they fly down they 
are shot,” &c.* 
Part of the water in St. James’s Park, London, was used as a 
decoy-pond in the reign of Charles II. In Cunningham’s ‘ Handbook 
of London,’f various items of the expenses connected with the con- 
struction of .a decoy here are copied from an account signed by the 
Sf merry monarch ” himself. Judging from these, it should have been 
a very respectable one as to extent. 
NOTES ON HYBRID BIRDS BRED IN A DOMESTIC OR SEMI- 
DOMESTIC STATE, f 
Plybrids, similar to those which have come under my own notice 
in Ireland, and that of friends who communicated the instances to 
* Sir C. Lyell’s £ Second Visit to the United States of North America,’ vol. i. 
p. 120, 1st edit. 
f Vol. ii. p. 434, 1st edit., as quoted in e Quart. Rev/ for March 1850, p. 470. 
I Hybrids bred in a wild state will be found noticed in vol. i. p. 309, and vol. ii. 
p. 40 ; in the former between the carrion and grey crow, and in the latter between 
