278 



Farming of Lincolnshire. 



Colsterworth, is a considerable bed of drift, a clay upon gravel, 

 the gravel obviously being rounded fragments of the yellow or 

 oolitic limestone. This deep deposit, in some places a red sandy 

 clay upon a dark-coloured gravel, also occupies the hill slopes 

 occasionally in round knolls. Eastward from this valley there is 

 a broad tract of cold heavy clay, though changing to a sandy soil, 

 and a brown clay upon a whitish marly clay, — doubtless deposits 

 of drift ; and beds of gravel lie in various parts of this limestone 

 district, as, for instance, between Corby and Edenham. In the 

 vicinity of Osbournby the drift clay is of a loamy nature with 

 gravel at 3 or 3J feet depth. In the north of the county the 

 detrital deposits are likewise present. About a mile west of 

 Ferriby Sluice rise 2 or 3 mounds of gravel, extending toward 

 Wintringham. At Whitton is a remarkably interesting section : 

 the village rests upon a bed of gravel many yards in thickness, 

 disposed in layers of from 2 inches to 2 feet each. Each layer 

 is composed of stones of one particular size, varying from those 

 as small as wheat to some as large as a man can lift, — not 

 arranged horizontally, but at several degrees of depression. 

 Gravel of a similar kind presents itself at Wintringham and 

 Flixborough. Flanked by the two ridges of hills which mark 

 this part of the county, and lying between the light sand and the 

 Humber, at Thealby, Coleby, and West Halton, is a red soil 

 upon dry gravel, producing first-rate crops. The soil at Whitton 

 is sand, of excellent quality, growing turnips, barley, and good 

 wheat. In the Isle of Axholme, on the high lands, are also found 

 local beds of gravel. 



The Alluvial formations must now be described ; — which is a 

 work of some difficulty. Investigation into the nature and origin 

 of alluvial deposits is somewhat analogous, we imagine, to the 

 study of diseases of the skin : " pathologists," it might be sup- 

 posed, might surely discover more respecting the outside of the 

 body than concerning affections of the viscera," yet, such is the 

 multiplicity and similarity of cutaneous disorders, that the con- 

 trary is the fact j and in the same manner, so closely do many 

 alluvial, drift, and tertiary beds resemble each other, that less 

 information seems to have been collected regarding the very skin 

 and outer integuments of the world than of the older aqueous 

 and volcanic rocks. But the alluvial strata of the Great Level of 

 the Fens are of peculiar interest to geologists, — the peat beds 

 and tidal deposits offering an approximative means of deciding 

 the date of the great Northern Drift.* Comparatively little has 



* The Roman embankment all along the coast stands upon ground which has been 

 covered with several feet of tidal accumulations since the bank was built ; and Roman 

 roads cross the Fens, laid upon peat, and yet overgrown by peat since they were con- 

 structed : these historical works constituting integers in a scale of years by which the 



