JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



13 



The pike of the Witham, however, in the present day will bear no com- 

 parison with the monsters of the old fen meres, as we may judge from the 

 jaws of this fish found in the peat and preserved in the Cambridge 

 Museum. In the collection of the late Mr. Frank Buckland was a 

 pike, weighing over 100 lbs., taken when Whittlesea mere was drained. 

 Valuable salmon fisheries were worked at the beginning of this 

 century on the Humber. Sir Charles Anderson* states: 'In 1806, 

 John Barrick of Barrow, gamekeeper, stated that his father rented 

 the fishery of Barrow, and that thirty years ago he was present at 

 the taking of eighteen salmon in one tide, one weighed 47 lbs., 

 another 46 lbs., the remainder from 18 to 20 lbs. each, and sold at 6d. 

 per lb.; at Killingholme 100 salmon were caught in one tide.' That 

 curious fish the burbolt, a freshwater cod, is common in the Trent 

 and other rivers ; the barbel also is plentiful, and grows to a large 

 size ; we have known six taken with a line and rod in little over the 

 hour, the collective weight of which was 42^ lbs. 



There are districts in Lincolnshire which require careful and 

 scientific examination before we can form a correct estimate of the 

 existing fauna and flora. Such are the low-lying flats and warp 

 islands at the junction of the Trent, Ouse, and Humber, where the 

 Avocet nested as recently as about 1840,+ and the ruff in 1871. 

 Then there are the commons and warrens in the north-west, near the 

 Trent, the habitat of many rare and interesting plants which thus far 

 have escaped the ban of cultivation. Here also nest, or have recently 

 nested, the hen harrier and short-eared owl, sheldrake, shoveller, teal, 

 and wild duck, stone curlew, rurT, redshank, snipe, dunlin, and little 

 grebe ; and at Twigmoor, as well as at Manton Common, thousands 

 of black-headed gulls. The great woodlands from Wragby southward 

 to Bourn, and about Horncastle, the last haunt of the wild cat, pine 

 marten, and kite, would well repay a close investigation ; also the 

 fenny flats at the head of the Wash, and the estuary itself, the home 

 of the seal, and in the autumn and winter still the chosen retreat of 

 innumerable wild fowl ; here too in the summer we have seen flights 

 of various waders and scoter, which from some cause or other have 

 not joined in the spring migration of their fellows to breeding grounds 

 fifteen hundred miles away within the Arctic circle. 



Of the present aspect of the shire, its rich fertility and picturesque 

 scenery we have said little ; let such as care to estimate its agricultural 

 wealth follow the wold road from Barton-on-Humber, above Caistor, 

 and through Tealby and Market Stainton to Horncastle, at the 



* The Lincoln Pocket Guide, p. 85. 



f Handbook of Yorkshire Vertebrata, Clarke and Roebuck, p. 72. 



Jan. 1886. 



