260 



Farming of Lincolnsliire. 



keen north-east winds, which are in some places severely felt in 

 spring ; and the south-eastern tract of marsh land is remarkably 

 free from fog.* Theoretically, for about every 300 feet of elevation 

 there is a loss of one degree of temperature ; and notwithstanding 

 the dryness and warmth of the calcareous and siliceous soils on 

 the uplands (favourable to the early maturing of plants), the har- 

 vest on the loftier hills, which rise in some instances probably 600 

 feet, is fully a week or ten days later than in the flatter districts. 

 When the high lands of north Lincolnshire were completely 

 isolated by the vast swamps and wet marshes of the Trent, 

 Ancholme, and Witham valleys, various endemical diseases were 

 generated in the pestilential exhalations that arose ; and twenty or 

 thirty years ago, when the southern marshes and fens were subject 

 to extensive flooding in rainy seasons — before steam commenced 

 its labours with the scoop-wheel and pump — the ague seized great 

 numbers of the inhabitants, with its shivering chills and fever fits. 

 But the improvements in engineering and husbandry have greatly 

 diminished the evaporation from the surface ; the atmosphere 

 has been rendered drier and warmer, and agues and intermittents 

 much less frequent. The air is now as pleasant and salubrious 

 as that of any other county ; the average scale of mortality being 

 about 1 in every 62, considerably less than the average of the 

 whole kingdom. The mean annual depth of rain fallen in Eng- 

 land in the 5 years 1839-43 was 27'54 inches; in the marshes 

 near the Wash the average of those years was only 26 68 inches, 

 and in Deeping Fen 28 79 inches. The average fall in Holbeach 

 Marsh during the 9 years 1839-47 was 22 57 inches, in Deeping 

 Fen 27-23 inches. 



The configuration and contour of the county depend upon the 

 two great watersheds which divide it into natural sections. Toward 

 the western side the oolite hills run north and south from the 

 H umber to Rutland and Leicestershire, having the broad Trent 

 Valley on the west. From near the northern extremity of this 

 range the Chalk Wolds stretch in loftier ridges to the south-east, 

 making an acute angle with the former hills, and being about 

 two-thirds their length. These two lines inclose between them 

 an undulating tract of country, which sinks into th"e Fens, occupy- 

 ing the south-eastern portion of the county. The Marshes also 

 skirt the Wolds on the north-east, lying between the high-lands 

 and the German Ocean. 



The first head for consideration is — 



* Seven or eight years ago, in the autumn, a cold east wind, blowing for a long time 

 in the same direction, produced a singular phenomenon in the neighbourhood of 

 Spilsby, about thirteen miles from the sea, on the edge of the Wold Hills : the trees 

 and hedges were whitened by crystallized incrustations of salt. This salt- blast had 

 the effect of destroying many nettles. 



