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 widgeons, 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 long 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. DECOY, _s._ Allurement to mischief. DECOY-DUCK, _s._ A duck that lures others. DEER, _s._ That class of animals which is hunted for venison. _Vide_ FALLOW, RED, and ROE DEER. DEGENERATE, _v._ To fall from its kind, to grow wild or base. DEMULCENT, _a._ Softening, mollifying. DEMULCENTS, _s._ Medicines of an oily and mucilaginous nature, as lint and quince seed, gum, &c. DEN, _s._ A cavern or hollow running horizontally; the cave of a wild beast. DEOBSTRUENT, _s._ A medicine that has the power to resolve viscidities. DESTROY, _v._ To kill; to put an end to. It is not unfrequently a subject of inquiry, how it may be possible to destroy a dog with least pain to himself, and least shock to the feelings of his owner. Although shooting and hanging are not, in themselves, painful deaths, yet the violence necessarily committed is revolting to one’s feelings. Whenever, therefore, cases arise (and many such do occur) where it would be infinitely more humane to destroy an animal than to prolong a miserable existence, and when the more usual modes are objected to on account of the violence and force necessary, either of these essential oils, _cherry laurel, and bitter almond_, dropped on the tongue, or a very small ball made from the extract, will extinguish life almost instantaneously, and without pain.—_Blaine._ DETERGE, _v._ To cleanse a sore. _Vide_ CAUSTICS. DETONATION, _s._ A noise somewhat more forcible than the ordinary crackling of salts in calcination, as in the going off of the pulvis or aurum fulminans. _Vide_ PERCUSSION. DETONATING POWDER, _s._ A chemical composition by which percussion-guns are discharged. One of the recipes for making detonating powder is:— One ounce of oxymuriate of potash. One eighth of an ounce of superfine charcoal. One sixteenth of an ounce of sulphur. Mixed with gum-arabic water, and then dried. It should be mixed up in wood, for fear of accident. Another, and, I am told, a far better proportion, is:—