XX YORKSHIRE—PHYSICAL ASPECT. 
badger, and at Hornby Castle near Catterick is to be found the 
only decoy now existing in the county. There is no lack of 
woodland, especially towards the south, where at Edlington Wood 
one of the last Yorkshire nests of the kite was taken, while that 
of the hobby has been found at Rossington and in the woods at 
Cawood, and in the latter, which were the largest in the county, 
the raven and buzzard reared their young till within compara- 
tively recent times. 
In the extreme south the flat marsh-lands which lie between 
the present and the old channels of the river Don, including the 
carrs near Doncaster, and the famed levels of Hatfield Chase and 
Thorne Waste, once ornithologically rich, even now present an 
avifauna of considerable interest. Formerly the three harriers, 
the black-tailed godwit, and the ruff were among the species 
breeding annually, and an island at the mouth of the Trent 
afforded the last British nest and eggs of the avocet. On Thorne 
Waste was also the site of a small decoy fairly productive of 
mallard, wigeon and teal, especially the latter. This decoy, of 
which no record is to be found, possessed three tubes, according 
to Mr. H. W. T. Ellis, of Crowle, who has seen it in operation, 
and states that it ceased to exist about forty years ago. At the 
present time Thorne Waste, which is about 6,000 acres in extent, 
is the breeding haunt of the mallard, teal, redshank, black- 
headed gull, and occasionally of the short eared owl and the 
curlew. On the intersecting drains the reed-warbler and species 
of minor interest nest abundantly. 
The Cleveland Hills, occupying the north-eastern portion 
of the county, though inferior to the North-Western Fells in 
extent and in elevation—reaching only to 1485 feet at Burton 
Head—are no less picturesque and interesting. Like them also 
it is a region of high moorlands—frequented by red grouse and 
twite, and in the spring and early summer by curlew and golden 
plover, with, occasionally, a pair of stone-curlews, which here 
find the northern limit of their breeding range in Britain—and 
intersected by the ramified, well-wooded, and beautiful dales 
drained by the Esk and by numerous branches of the Derwent. 

