A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



30 feet in height. Between these dunes and a line drawn roughly from 

 Lancaster through Preston and Wigan to Manchester, Lancashire is prac- 

 tically a level plain undulating eastward, rarely anywhere rising over 

 400 to 500 feet. Eastward of this line the country gradually ascends 

 through the foot hills and outliers of the Pennine Range to the boundary of 

 Yorkshire. A special feature of the plains is the extensive area covered by 

 peat mosses. In former days these were vastly greater ; but now they are 

 less continuous and more isolated. Yet still between the Ribble and the 

 Mersey there is an almost continuous belt, twenty miles in length by some 

 three miles in width, dotted with numerous meres and pools, the remnants of 

 the more extensive water-expanses, some of which nearly equalled Lake 

 Windermere in size, so that at one time the name of Lake Lancashire was 

 given to these lowlands. In like manner the great woods and smaller plan- 

 tations, still so abundantly preserved, are but the residue of the almost un- 

 broken forest which once clothed this part of England and harboured so 

 many now vanished species of animals and plants. Countless parks, shrubberies 

 and orchards diversify the surface of the county in the midst of cultivated farms 

 or extensive permanent grass-lands. Lancashire, south of the Fells, therefore 

 presents suitable cover and abundant food supply for most species of birds. 

 Still year after year constant drainage, the continuous additions being made to 

 the arable land, and the growth of the population with the demand for wider 

 areas for human habitation, are curtailing and extinguishing these pleasant 

 habitats and driving their feathered tenants to other sanctuaries. Many species 

 are now far less frequently met with than even a few decades ago ; some have 

 entirely deserted us with little hope of their ever returning. The little bittern, 

 the hobby, and, it is to be feared, the kite, are lost to us ; the honey-buzzard, 

 the bittern, the night-heron and the wryneck are aves rarissimce ; the cross- 

 bill, the chough, the carrion crow, the buzzard, the marsh harrier, the nut- 

 hatch, and the tree-creeper, become rarer every season. 



The almost entire absence of shore rocks deprives the county of many 

 of our common sea-birds as breeding species, the majority of which would 

 certainly nest under different conditions, such as the puffin, most of the 

 gulls, the guillemots, the chough, the rock-dove, the cormorant, and the 

 shag. As might be expected, however, from the extent of our maritime 

 sandbanks, our lakes, meres, rivers and the wide river-like ditches cut 

 through the mosses, the number of sea or fresh-water- loving birds is very 

 large. No fewer than seventy-nine can be enumerated either as resident or 

 visiting species, and, as already said, during migration and in severe winters 

 vast flocks congregate on the sandbanks, on the mudflats of the estuaries, and 

 on our inland waters. 



Several species have been recorded for the first time as British birds 

 from Lancashire, namely, the black-throated wheatear, the collared pratin- 

 cole, the sociable plover, the great snipe, the white-faced petrel, and the lanner 

 falcon ; while such rarities as Montagu's harrier, the goshawk, the honey- 

 buzzard, the red-footed falcon, the glossy ibis, the spoonbill, and the Siberian 

 thrush, have all been observed or taken in it. Several of these records are 

 becoming ancient history ; many of those visitors have not for many years 

 passed this way again. A goodly number of the specimens upon which these 

 records are founded were fortunately acquired by the thirteenth Earl of 



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