Page 69 HISTORY OF DECOYS.

HISTORY OF DECOYS.


The original drainage scheme that was completed in 1652 by William Earl of Bedford must not be imagined to have caused the formation of firm ground, such as is now to be seen in the Fens. The cuts, dykes, banks and sluices and other contrivances then made may be said merely to have turned what was in winter an inland sea into a vast marsh, in the hollows of which such merges as Whitely and Ramsey were formed by the surplus waters that could not reach the sea. The Fens, especially those of East Lincoln, were not finally drained or really cultivated until the close of the last century: and up to as late as 1822 immense extents of wild Fen and marsh still existed here and there all over the Bedford Level. Whittlesey and Ramsey meres and their immediate Fens not being drained till thirty years later. And still the old Fens, of which the Great Level is formed, require careful supervision. For as they are dried, improved, and drained, so they gradually fall below the level of the sea and rivers, and the destruction of a by a high tide and onshore gale, or the flooding of a river are sea-wall liable to lay (as occurred in 1862) many thousand acres under water in the course of a few hours. There are even now engineers who look upon it as no impossibility, by an unlucky combination of wind and tide, for the "Great Bedford Level" to be again flooded as of yore, and who point to similar catastrophes in Holland as a warning for watchfulness. In these days the so-called Fens are but great flats of level grain fields or meadows, divided by ditches instead of by walls or hedges. They are intersected by numerous perfectly straight canals that run like silver threads into distant space, and into these the ditches and minor drains are led. It is probable that all the eastern county Decoys were constructed after the first great drainage of the Fens was completed in 1652, when it was seen what numberless wildfowl, as was but natural, resorted from all parts to the marshes and ooze left by the out-driven floods. Previous to this the ducks were habitually driven into nets, as previously described. A practice continued till much later times on such meres as were formed here and there by the receding waters.