The naturalist 



For 1887. 



THE RIVER TEES: 

 ITS MARSHES AND THEIR FAUNA. 



R. LOFTHOUSE. 



The River Tees (Teyse, Tesi, Teisa, Tesa, Teise, These, Teysa — 

 of old records) separates the counties of York and Durham. At the 

 mouth'of the river there is a vast extent of mud-flats (or, as they are 

 locally called, slems), some thousands of acres in extent. These 

 mud flats or ' slems ' used to be bordered by marshes more or less all 

 the way to Stockton, a distance of about ten or twelve miles, and in 

 former times were resorted to by vast numbers of wild fowl. The 

 marshes on the south side of the river, and a good deal of the fore- 

 shore from Stockton to Eston, have been for the most part reclaimed and 

 filled with slag, and are now occupied with ironworks, wharves, and 

 ship-building yards; and of late years ironworks have been established 

 on the Coatham Marsh opposite to the extreme mouth of the river, on 

 the site of a rabbit warren, and close to a wild duck decoy, which 

 existed there down to the years 1870-2. On the north side of the 

 river one or two ironworks have been established at Port Clarence, 

 opposite to Middlesbrough, at a distance of seven or eight miles 

 from the sea : that of Messrs. Bell Brothers is the principal, and one 

 of the oldest in the district. To the east of Port Clarence, the north 

 side of the river is still open and unoccupied, and the Saltholm 

 Marsh remains in much the same state as in former times, but exten- 

 sive reclamation works are being carried out on the shore opposite by 

 the Tees Conservancy Commissioners, who have reclaimed or have 

 in course of reclamation over 2,500 acres of land, their operations 

 being confined to the area principally of the foreshore on both sides 

 of the estuary, comprised between high water at spring tides and high 

 water at neaps, and who have constructed over a dozen miles of 

 reclamation-embankments, principally of slag. The mud-flats at the 

 mouth of the river are succeeded by a sandy beach, on the one side 

 reaching from Seaton Snook to Hartlepool, and on the other by 

 perhaps one of the finest stretches of sand in Great Britain, extending 



Jan. 1887. B 



