CORDEAUX : LINCOLNSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 319 
each 1,000 acres it. was fair to kill 2,000 couples. They were sold 
by the hundred of six score, averaging ten pounds the hundred. On 
the warrens between Gayton and Tathwell, silver skins have made 
from 15s. to 21s. a dozen. Winter food given was ash boughs, gorse 
hay, and turnips. Three couples per acre were considered winter 
stock. In another case, the profits on 250 acres of well-managed 
warren are put at #91 8s. 2d. One of the best-managed warrens in 
the county was Mr. Ansell’s warren of North Ormsby—the stock, 
chiefly silver-greys; these realised 8s. to 1os. an acre profit, but in 
some years 15s. to 21s.. The skins and carcases were in full season 
in November. The silver skins were dressed for the North China 
markets, and used for lining the walls of Manchu dwellings, to keep 
out the cold; the greys were used by the hatters. 
The expenses of keeping up a warren appear to have been very 
considerable. One man could do the killing and looking after 1,000 
acres. The warren was surrounded by sod walls, lasting about seven 
years, in ‘a middling way.’ They required fresh facing once in 
seven years, and fresh capping with furze every three years. There 
was often great loss from running vermin and large birds of prey, as 
Kites, Buzzards, and Goshawks. Night watchers were required to 
‘protect them from those infinitely worse vermin, the poachers.’ 
In heavy snows, much money had to be spent in clearing the snow 
from the warren walls, for in these bleak and wind-swept uplands, the 
heavy drift would top the walls in one night. In severe and long- 
protracted storms, turnips, when procurable, were considered the 
best food to give, as rabbits can find them under the snow by scent. 
Three large cartfuls a day would fodder from 1,000 to 1,200 
couples. Great beds of tall thistles and nettles, acres together, 
abounded on the warrens, and we have been told by very old people 
that great elders grew and flourished, and there were mighty thorns, 
old as the hills, all ragged with grey lichen, and carrying clusters of 
haws like carcanets of coral, doubtless affording many a rich feast 
to the incoming Redwing and Fieldfare in the latter autumn. 
The slopes and hollows of the hills were often very boggy, from 
springs and ‘sipes’ breaking out and having it all their own way, 
encouraging a dense growth of rushes, and making the ground so — 
soft that no horseman could cross. 
The country towns and villages in the middle marsh and sea 
marshes were surrounded by vast open fields. Barton field, enclosed 
in 1793, contained nearly 6,000 acres; and Barton, Barrow, and 
Goxhill together about 17,000 acres, including open arable land, 
open meadows, cow and horse pastures, and furze. The rotation 
then on strong land was almost invariably—(t) fallows, (2) wheat, 
Noy. 189s. 
