194 
ANAS BOSCHAS. 
“ In this manner, five or six dozen have been taken 
at one drift. When the wind blows directly in or out of 
the pipe, the fowl seldom work well, especially when 
it blows in. If many pipes are made in a lake, they 
should be so constructed as to suit different winds. 
“ Duck and mallard are taken from August to June ; 
teal or wigeon from October to March ; becks, smee, 
golden eyes, arps, cricks, and pintails or sea pheasants, 
in March and April. 
<c Poker ducks are seldom taken, on account of their 
diving and getting back in the pipe. 
“ It may be proper to observe here, that the ducks 
feed during the night, and that all is ready prepared 
for this sport in the evening. The better to entice the 
ducks into the pipe, hemp seed is strewed occasionally 
on the water. The season allowed, by act of Parliament, 
for catching these birds in this way, is from the latter 
end of October till February. 
“ Particular spots, or decoys, in the fen countries 
are let to the fowlers at a rent of from five to thirty 
pounds per annum ; and Pennant instances a season in 
which thirty-one thousand two hundred ducks, including 
teals and wigeons, were sold in London only, from ten of 
these decoys near Wainfleet, in Lincolnshire. Formerly, 
according to Willoughby, the ducks while in moult, 
and unable to fly, were driven by men in boats, furnished 
with long poles, with which they splashed the water 
between Jong nets, stretched vertically across the pools, 
in the shape of two sides of a triangle, into lesser nets 
placed at the point; and, in this way, he says, four 
thousand were taken at one driving in Deeping-Fen ; 
and Latham has quoted an instance of two thousand six 
hundred and forty-six being taken in two days, near 
Spalding, in Lincolnshire ; but this manner of catching 
them, while in moult, is now prohibited . 55 
