324 CORDEAUX : LINCOLNSHIRE AGRICULTURE, 
Wednesday, bacon ; Thursday, ash-heap cake, and butter-milk to 
drink ; Friday, hot bread-and-butter ; Saturday, pan-pudding, 7. 
a pudding made of flour, with small bits of bacon in it; of which 
a man thought himself very lucky if he got two bits. 
‘In many instances, women wore the same gowns and cloaks - 
which had served their mothers; and nobody could remember 
a farmer having a complete new suit of clothes. A servant girl of 
the best class had’ forty shillings per year wage, when the most 
homely and necessary articles of clothing were much dearer 
than they are now. She got up at three o’clock in the morning to 
spin, and was clad chiefly in linsey wolsey garments. Could she see 
a servant of the present day decked out on Sunday afternoons, 
I believe she would have fainted with astonishment.’ 
Wages, however, were high compared with other parts of England. — 
In the vast majority of cases, the cottagers and labourers kept a cow 
or two, pigs, and often a few sheep. In fact the Commissioner says, 
‘it is impossible to speak too highly in praise of the cottage system 
of Lincolnshire.’ The poor-rates, he says, on the average did not 
amount to one-third of what is paid in Suffolk. There can be no 
doubt whatever that the ancient common rights were a great 
advantage to the rural population; moreover, as Arthur Young very 
wisely remarks, there is ‘another object yet more important, the 
attachment which men must inevitably feel to their country, when 
they partake thus in the property of it.’ 
At the time of the Survey, much planting had been undertaken, 
but of all planters in the country, Lord Yarborough had taken the 
lead, and for ten years past had planted 100 acres annually, which 
he was continuing in the same proportion. The beautiful plantations 
about Croxby Lake, and Mr. Angerstein’s Stainton plantations, had 
not been commenced. 
Here and there in the report of the Survey, we come across 
interesting local items, for instance, that the men of Marshchapel and 
Grainthorpe are famous for cutting hay-stacks round: they cut them 
as true as if turned in a lathe. 
The marsh shepherds had a breed of dogs trained to lift overcast, 
or far-wheltered sheep, and, when travelling to Alford, the Commis- 
sioner witnessed a dog of this sort lift twenty-one in succession. 
An old man, near North Somercotes, had a great reputation for 
curing ‘giddy,’ or sturdy sheep, by trepanning, and saved about half 
of those operated upon. This operation has been again and again 
performed to our knowledge, and successfully, within the last sixty — 
years, by a marsh shepherd: he used an instrument to cut through 
the scull like a wad punch, with the cutting edge serrated. a 
Naturalist, ; a 
