318 CORDEAUX : LINCOLNSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 
there can be no doubt that the common turnip had been grown as 
a field crop—sown broadcast—both in Norfolk and some other parts 
of England long before it was introduced into Lincolnshire. In 
1798, however, the Swede turnip had been scarcely tried, and its 
special cultivation was neither understood or indeed looked upon with 
much favour by the few who had made experiments in that direction. 
The great wastes, north and south of Lincoln, had been partly 
enclosed, and land, once covered with heaths and heather and 
patches of the lovely blue gentian, converted during the last quarter 
of the eighteenth century into profitable arable farms, then letting as 
high as ros. an acre. Only a few years previously these heaths 
extended from the south of the county, by Kirton-in-Lindsey to 
Barton-on-Humber, a distance of seventy miles; there was also an 
immense tract of heath land below Caistor, between the low rounded 
hills of the chalk and oolite, and much again, of the same 
character, in the north-west angle of the county, to say nothing of 
the wastes and wilds of Axholme beyond Trent. The vast tract 
of heath land, north and south of Lincoln, was, by an old survey, 
roughly estimated at 118,400 acres. Much of this was utilised as 
large sheep-walks, with pieces tilled alternately, and letting from 
1s. 6d. to 2s. per acre. 
Turning next to the Wolds, we find enormous tracts still covered 
with furze, or used as rabbit warrens ; the open parts studded closely 
with ant-hills and hassocks. On Lord Yarborough’s Brocklesby 
Estate at Limber, Swallow, Cabourn, Rothwell, miles of the hills 
were covered with gorse. The Commissioner remarks: ‘It is 
a beautiful plant for a fox-hunter. Lord Yarborough keeps a pack 
of hounds ; if he has a fall, I hope it will be into a furze bush ; he is 
too good to be hurt much, but a decent pricking might be beneficial 
to the country.’ The great Linnzeus, it is said, wept with joy when 
_ he was first shewn in England some acres of gorse in full flower: 
what then would have been his impression had he seen from the 
crest of the Wolds league beyond league of the golden sea of 
blossom? Forty years previously it had been all warren for thirty 
miles, from Spilsby to beyond Caistor. These commons swarmed 
with birds of prey, like the Harriers, which nested in regular colonies 
—as many as ten pairs within a small space of moor. 
In 1798 the chief feature of this part of the county was the 
numerous rabbit-warrens of 1,000 to 4,000 acres; in eighteen miles, 
from Louth to Caistor, ten miles were unenclosed, except as warrens, 
The rent was 2s. to 3s. an acre. The total area then under rabbits 
in the county was immense. On the Wolds, these were chiefly the 
silver-haired ; on Lincoln Heath, the grey sort did the best. Om 
Naturalist, | 
