Natural History. 65 



LINCOLNSHIRE.* 



By JOHN CORDEAUX, M.B.O.U., 



Great Cotes, R.S.O., Lincoln , Convener of the British Association Committee on the 

 Migration of Birds. 



IT is somewhat curious that even in the present day so 

 much misconception should linger in connection with the 

 second in size of English shires, popularly invested with 

 fens and fogs, ague and marsh fever; a haunt of wild-fowl and 

 waders, reeds and watercress : where the rainfall is excessive, 

 floods the order and not the exception. One of the greatest 

 of modern authors adds to this general prejudice when in 

 commencing his workf he writes 'it was raining down in 

 Lincolnshire,' a remark perhaps as little complimentary as that 

 of Henry VIII., who speaks of the county as 'being one of 

 the most brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of the 

 least experience.'! Even at the commencement of the present 

 century Lincolnshire was comparatively a terra incognita^ and 

 was looked upon as the ultima Thu/e of English counties. This 

 isolation probably in great part due to its position with the 

 broad frontage of a great tidal river and the sea to the north, 

 east, and south-east, separated also, as in the Isle of Axholme 

 and the fens, by impassable swamps and morasses from the rest 

 of England. Thus it came to pass that Lincolnshire folks 

 were considered behind the age, and it is yet somewhat of a 

 reflection on the literary enterprise of the shire that, notwith- 

 standing the materials ready to hand, it should stand almost 

 alone in having no county history, 



From north to south, Lincolnshire extends seventy-five 

 miles, and from east to west forty-five. The area is 1,767,962 

 acres the Isle of Axholme containing 50,000; of the whole a 

 very small portion, 5,762 acres, now remains which is not 

 either cultivated or in pasture. Fuller in quaint language 

 likens it to c a bended bow, the sea making the back, the rivers 

 Welland and Humber the two horns thereof, whilst Trent 



* Reprinted from The Naturalist, 1886, p. i, by special permission, 

 f Charles Dickens, Bleak House. 



JFroude, History of England (Ed. 1870), Vol. II., p. 527. 

 Vol. 5, No. 37, Lines. N. & 9. _ 



Nat. Hist. Sea. 



