of the pump mills that are draining the levels
which look so flat and so Dutch, you come
to a wood on the margin of a lake. The
first glimpse of the decoy is an arch of brown
network among the trees, and glimpses of pale
fences of reeds. In the centre of a hundred
acres of reedy and oozy water, thick with
water-lilies and ranunculuses, spread eleven
shallow creeks, star fashion. These rays, about
six yards wide at their mouth, narrowing
gradually as they recede, and craftily curved to
the right, run about seventy-five yards each,
and terminate in a point. At about thirty feet
from the mouth of each there rises an iron-rod
arch some ten feet high, smaller arches following,
the end one sinking to less than two
feet high and wide. These arches are covered
with a cord net which, staked to the ground,
forms a long cage broad and open to the pool.
These are what Norfolk men call " pipes." On
each side of the airy traps are screens of
greyish yellow reeds five feet high; these
screens run in zigzag about a foot from the
water's edge, and traverse the edge of the pipe
alternately high and low. Wild fowl always
fly against the wind, so that a pipe to be
successful must have the wind blowing down it
from the narrow end towards the mouth. In
Norfolk the north-east pipe is a special
favourite. There is no mystery in decoying,
it needs only a man, some decoy ducks, and a
trained dog. The ducks are taught to rise and
come to the man for the bruised barley he
sprinkles on the water at the signal of a very
faint yet clear whistle. The " piper " dog may
be a mongrel, but it must be of a grey colour,
and of quiet, obedient, staid habits. The decoy
season is almost exactly contemporaneous with
the oyster season. The time chosen is often
noon on a bright day. The decoy man carries
with him a piece of lighted peat to neutralise
any scent of himself that might scare the fowl.
Stealing along like a murderer, the man slips
behind the screen, and looks through loopholes
prepared in the reed walls. If there be any
signs of emerald necks and brown backs he gives
the whistle, fatal as Varney's signal to Amy
Robsart. The moment the decoy ducks swim
towards the mouth of the pipe the wild birds gain
confidence, and enter more or less eagerly into
the pipe, allured by the floating barley; at the
same moment the piper dog, running along the
screen, leaps back through the first break in
search of the biscuit thrown him. This instantly
allures the teal and widgeon, who then flock in
with greater confidence. They are now safe in
the toils, and the decoy-man having fitted a
purse-net about as large as a corn-sack to the
narrow end of the opening, an assistant, on a
given signal, shows himself at one of the breaks
in the screen in the rear of the ducks, and,
without shouting, throws up his arms or waves
his hat. The sensitive birds, always suspicious
of man, instantly with splash, flap, and
screaming quack, race up the pipe in utter panic,
and making for the first opening, find themselves
in the inhospitable purse-net. The decoy-man
soon appears to the jostling captives, and in
five minutes they are ready for Leadenhall
Market.

But the decoy-man has many vexations.
There is one artful species of duck known
as the Pochard, which is always fatal to his
schemes. A demoniacal craft is possessed by
these birds, who, the moment there is an
alarm, turn, dive and re-emerge beyond the
pipes. Often do they form a vanguard and
swim forward in line, taking precedence
probably on the strength of superior subtlety,
and so keep back their unsuspecting
companions. Decoy-men have tried to capture
these sagacious wretches by sunken bait,
bristling with ambushed hooks, but the pochard's
dying struggles are scarcely very alluring to
the inquiring widgeon. A heron perching on
the crown of the netted arch will often scare
the suspicious birds, a sullen pike splashing in
the shallows, or the sight of even the tip of
the black nose of an otter is also fatal to sport.
A gunshot in a distant field, the ring of a
hammer, or the rumbling of cart wheels, will
frighten away ducks for weeks. Decoying,
says a very sound authority, was more
profitable before steam-boats brought over such
heaps of Dutch and Flemish ducks. Yet there
are still times when wild ducks fetch eight
shillings a couple in Leadenhall Market. Two
thousand birds all but thirty-seven were
captured at Ranworth decoy in 1858-59.

Fast now to Norwich bears the voyaging
bird, for how can any crow of sagacity crow
at all if he neglect the old cathedral city of
Norfolk with its seventy-five thousand people,
its thirty-six churches, its narrow, crooked,
steep streets, its busy factories, and its crowd
of low and even thatched cottages, its Bigod's
Castle, now a prison, on a central mound, and all
these treasures heaped in a deep basin, scooped
out of the level table-land? St. Andrew's
Hall, where concerts are given and corporation
feasts held, was once a church of the Benedictine
friars, and in it Charles the Second and
the ill-favoured swarthy Portuguese queen
whom he neglected so shamelessly, dined in
1671. Some good memorial pictures, expressing
various paroxysms of national gratitude, loyalty,
and party feeling, adorn the walls. Meretricious,
graceful Lawrences; delightful, sketchy
Gainsboroughs; vigorous, coarse Opies;
and, above all, Sir William Beechey's manly
portrait of that great Norfolk worthy—Nelson.

Apropos of art, Norwich is the city in which
to see old Crome's fine landscapes. This great
artist, the son of a poor journeyman weaver, was
born in a humble Norwich public-house, in 1769.
At first an errand-boy to a doctor, who found
him clumsy and slovenly, he was afterwards
apprenticed to a house and sign-painter. He
lodged with a painter's apprentice, who had a
certain rude taste for art, and the two boys drew
and painted together. Sir William Beechey,
who was kind to the Norfolk lad, observed
with surprise his rapid progress. Marrying,
however, early, Crome became so poor that he
had to paint sugar ornaments for the confectioners,
to clip his cat's tail to make brushes,