I 2 



JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



ruffs and reeves, snipe, and redshank ; still further inland, in the woods 

 skirting the wolds, the kite," 55 " buzzard, and hobby. These were the 

 days before the gamekeeper and the trapper were known, and sports- 

 men were well content with moderate bags, shot over dogs, and with 

 much healthy exercise. 



All testimony proves the former abundance of birds in Lincoln- 

 shire, and we only know of one exception to this. William Cobbett, 

 who died in 1835, in his 'Rural Rides,' which extended almost over 

 the whole of England, coming to Horncastle, says: 'There is one 

 deficiency, and that with me is a great one, throughout this county 

 of corn and grass and oxen and sheep that I have come over during 

 the last three weeks, the want of singing birds. We are now just in 

 the season when they sing most. Here in all this country I have 

 seen and heard only about four skylarks, and not one other bird of 

 any description ; and of small birds that do not sing I have seen only 

 one yellow-hammer, and it was perched on the rail of the pound 

 between Boston and Sibsey.' Had he passed through the same 

 district in the autumn, when the great wave of migration has set in, 

 he would have probably written differently, seeing the fields swarming 

 with larks, chaffinches, and buntings, the hedgerows alive with 

 blackbirds, thrushes, and redwings, and in the marshes, near the 

 coast, immense flocks of snow buntings, tree sparrows, linnets, and 

 twites, as well as hundreds of that characteristic bird of the county 

 the grey crow ; on the coast itself such flights of knot, godwit, and grey 

 plover as can be seen nowhere else in England. 



The old fresh-water fisheries of Lincolnshire had a great reputation, 

 more especially for pike and eels ; enormous numbers of the latter 

 were annually taken, and they formed no small part of the tribute and 

 endowments of the monasteries and religious houses. The fen eels 

 often grew to an immense size — two are mentioned by Yarrell, taken 

 in draining a fen dike, near Wisbeach, one of which weighed 27 lbs., 

 the other 25 lbs.t The pike is plentiful in the rivers and drains of the 

 fens ; there is an old adage which says 



Witham pike 

 England has neen like ; 



and another, 



Ankholme eels and Witham pike, 

 In all England are nane syke. 



*The eggs of the last kite recorded as nesting in Lincolnshire were taken from 

 a nest in Bullington Wood, near Wragby, in the spring of 1870. Since this time 

 it has only occurred as an immigrant passing south in the autumn. 



t We recently obtained one of four large eels, Anguilla acntirostris, caught in a 

 trawl net at sea some miles east of Flamborough Head. 



Naturalist, 



