Page 6 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

    As, however, this method of taking fowl swept them off wholesale, they naturally decreased in certain localities. As years went on the habit became generally common) till at last an Act was passed prohibiting it. This Act came in force in 1534, and debarred fowl being taken between the 31st of May and the 31st of August in every year.
    Still wildfowl protection* was not strictly enforced in those days, we may be sure, for the fen country, where this driving used principally to take place was well-nigh a terra incognita. Driving ducks, however, was continued down to 1676, as at that date Willughby alludes to it, as also does Gough still later, in 1720, when he speaks of the 3,000 ducks being taken at Croyland at one time in a single net. This might not be an infringement of the law, as the latter writer speaks of the owners of the Decoy having had this large take of fowl. By owners, I consider were meant the people who were proprietors of or paid taxes on, some particular piece of water which they reserved for wildfowl, as a Decoy is now.
    There can be no doubt that driving ducks into a tunnel of net closed at one end was the original method by which they were caught, and that it suggested the formation in the first instance of the "cage," and later of the modern Decoy as now worked and constructed. For as the fens were drained, land apportioned, and the fowl became less abundant and tame, and firearms were improved and more used, people found they could not succeed in taking the birds as in days past.

*I find this protection was afterwards withdrawn, which no doubt accounts for the practice of driving ducks being alluded to in more recent times. For it appears that in the fourth year of the reign of Edward VI. (1551) the Act was repealed, but it was at the same time provided that no person should destroy or take away the eggs of any wildfowl. The recital of this latter Act is as follows, and for its quaint wording and allusions is worthy of insertion :-" Whereas in the xxv year of the reign of your Majestie's father of most famous memory, King Henry the Eighth, an Act was made containing two branches, whereof the one was against the taking of wildfowl between May 31 and August 31 with any nets or engines upon a pain limited therefor as in the second statute more largely doth appear: and forasmuch as the occasion of the second branch appeareth sithen to have risen but on a private case, and that no manner of common commodity is sithen perceived to have grown of the same, being notably by daily experience, found and known, that there is at this present less plenty of fowl brought into the markets than there was before the making of the said Act, which is taken to come of the punishment of God, whose benefit was thereby taken away from the poor people that were wont to live by their skill in taking of the said fowl, wherebye they were wont at that time to sustain themselves with their poor households, to the great saving of other kinds of victual, of which aid they are now destitute, to their great and extreme impoverishing."