THE LINCOLNSHIRE COAST. 53 



Cleethorpes, at the mouth of the Humber, I also visited, intending to 

 dredge there, but as oyster-catching is the staple fishing of the place, I 

 tried in vain to get a boat. The men could not understand my going out 

 for anything but oysters, and that they did not like, so I was forced to 

 content myself with the shore, and rely on their promises to bring me back 

 all they could find. Most of the inhabitants of the place are brought up 

 to this kind of life, and at the beginning of every week they set off, re- 

 turning at the latter end of it, when each boat-load is shot out on a 

 separate tract of ground marked out with tall stakes, visible at high water, 

 and for which they pay a rent of ten shillings an acre. The oysters are 

 measured off in tubs, each of which contains about a thousand, and is worth 

 twenty shillings. The boys, before they are old enough to dredge, gather 

 cockles on the shore, which they sell for one shilling a peck. 



The oyster-beds are laid bare at spring tides, and an opportunity now 

 occurring, I walked down for the double purpose of seeing them, and to 

 collect whatever shells might be uncovered at low water. 



Trochus cinerarias and umbilicatus and Chiton cinereus were abundant; I 

 found also some remarkably fine foliated specimens of Purpura lapillus, and 

 at high-water mark Trochus tumidus, Mangelia rufa, Lacuna crassior, Led- 

 caudata, Fusus antiguus, Gyprcea JEuropcea, Buccinutn undatum, Scrobicularia 

 piperata, and several others. On this part of the coast there are large 

 marshy tracts of ground, called Fitties, fretted with little salt pools, and 

 covered with a vegetation of thrift, sea lavender, and other marine plants, 

 over which the sea flows at high spring tides, forming a great resort of 

 wild-fowl, both for breeding and in the winter season. Every hole and 

 pool here I found filled with the little Bissoa ulvce. They especially fre- 

 quent the ground where it is damp, crawling over the slime, and clinging 

 to every dead shell and refuse weed. The more marshy parts of the Fitties 

 abounded with Redshanks, Ducks, and sea-birds of many kinds. The Com- 

 mon and Lesser Terns were especially'£abundant; some of them kept con- 

 tinually wheeling about above me, with their incessant whistling scream, 

 now and then darting down with great rapidity to within a few feet of 

 my head. The Lesser Black-backed Gulls stood solemnly and stiffly on the 

 little eminences of sand, and took to flight long before I got near them. 

 The Oyster-catchers flew backwards and forwards in small flocks, keeping 

 in a line like Ducks, and settling as far out to sea as possible, wherever 

 the retiring tide left the ridges of brown sand bare, while countless clouds 

 of Dunlins and Sandpipers swept along the coast. 



The Oyster-catchers may sometimes be seen in immense flocks on our 

 flat muddy shores. I remember once at Hunstanton, on the Norfolk side 

 of the Wash, sitting on the cliff for upwards of an hour, as the evening 

 was coming on, and watching these birds returning from feeding on the 



