266 



Farming of Lmcoinsfiire. 



and will produce wheat of good yield and quality. On the steep 

 western slope the soil is fertile and good : at the base of the hill^ 

 and extending a short distance in the vale, there is a narrow line 

 of pasture upon a rich clayey loam, probably a talus formed of 

 the debris washed from the hill. Beyond this is a band of red 

 soil under arable culture— a deep sandy loam without stones, 

 apparently a rich soil for 1^ feet in depth ; but though it will 

 produce an immense bulk of corn the grain is of very bad quality. 

 This appears to rest upon the inferior oolite. West of this is a 

 rising tract of good land, which again sinks into the clay valley. 

 It belongs apparently to the lias ; there is not much of it under 

 grass, and it does not make good feeding land. Southward of 

 Lincoln, for I5»or 20 miles, extends the " Heath," a ridge of the 

 great oolite rock, probably about 250 or 300 feet in height, and 

 having a gradual descent eastward. The soil is generally a good 

 sandy loam, with clay enough to render it slippery with wet ; but 

 it may be worked m almost any weather, being a free- working, 

 fertile soil, and easy to manage. It is often thin, loose, and 

 dry, approaching in the eastern parts to a fawn-coloured sand 

 about 6 inches in depth ; but the usual depth varies from 9 to IS 

 or more inches. The whole Heath district is arable land, pro- 

 ducing large crops of green food, barley, and wheat. The soil is 

 always dry, as the water sinks through the fissures in the stone 

 until it meets with a bed of clay, when it issues in springs of 

 great volume and rapidity,* originating the rivulets which flow 

 downward to the Fens, and keeping the surface of the lias con- 

 tinually wet with their flow. The breadth of the great oolite 

 is here from 4 to 7 miles, and the eastern portions, which chiefly 

 consist of bluish limestone, dip under the Oxford clay and drift 

 deposits between Lincoln and Sleaford. The inferior oolite 

 skirts the western declivity from near Lincoln to Honington and 

 Belton, forming a good red deep loam with fragments of stone 

 (locally termed " creech " land) and a light sand. In the valley 

 which intersects the cliff" at right angles from Honington to An- 

 caster, the same bed crops out, having a surface varying from a 

 very light sand to a loamy sand and to creech. Through Bark- 

 ston, Belton, and other parishes, the red land is remarkably 

 rich, lying upon the slope of the great oolite hill, and between 

 it and the range of strong clay on the west. The abrupt hill 

 of great oolite passes by Grantham, Harlaxton, and Denton to 

 the boundary of the county : the inferior oolite swells into lofty 

 irregularly-shaped hills about 2 miles distant from it, passing by 

 Barrowby and Woolsthorpe to Belvoir, or rather caps these hills 



* At Stoke-Rochford, near Colsferworth, on the great oolite, is a spring which 

 throws up nineteen tons of water in a minute. At Braceborough, near Lincoln, a spring 

 issues seven hogsheads per minute, and there is an abundance of similar instances. 



