BROUGHTON WOODS. 
Rey. I. Aprian WooprurFE-Pracock, L.Tu., F.L.S. 
The vivid memories and notes of forty years are recalled by 
this place name. Geology, botany, zoology and anthropology— 
what varying lines of former interests, crowded aside by the 
battle of life, rise up before the mind. Most of them are still 
green enough to fill one’s day dreams of scientific conquest with 
vital realities. With all true workers—those who love knowledge 
for its own sake—there should always be a part of the higher self 
and its mental belongings, which forms an inclosed spot, a shrine, 
the sordid rush of life can never enter and defile. 
The very name Broughton Woods suggests a district, not a 
parish to me. This is the woodland and sandy common country 
extending from Appleby railway station on the north to Manton 
Warren on the south, and from Santon Wood and Sweeting 
Thorns on the west, to Broughton Decoy in the Ancholme Fen 
and Scawby park and lake on the east. In our youthful days 
topography was not our strong point, and the mental confusions 
of childhood are only too apt to cling to the grown man like 
other pecularities. One may know all the parish boundaries now, 
but they are disregarded as purely artificial, it is the district that 
is attractive asa whole. ‘There are few such neighbourhoods in 
Lincolnshire. The fifteen square miles thus roughly indicated, 
contain even to-day for working naturalists varying interests of 
the most engaging type. Fresh ground in new lines of enquiry 
opens out all over, when we begin to reflect on past work. 
The geology, because there are no surface minerals, has not 
been fully worked out on up-to-date lines. So for the earnest 
student there are problems innumerable. From the embedded 
