JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



from that cause — have disappeared many beautiful insects. The 

 great copper and swallow-tailed butterflies, the red wainscot, rosy- 

 marsh, red leopard and Whittlesea ermine moths, and many another 

 insect treasure too numerous to mention; gone too are the myriad 

 frogs, the 'Lincolnshire nightingales/ whose night croakings well nigh 

 drowned all other sounds of fen-life. 



Scarcely second to the fens in interest were the vast swamps and 

 wastes of the Isle of Axholme, which as late as the commencement 

 of the present century still swarmed with various fowl. Mr. Stone- 

 house has left some interesting notes* in connection with the avi- 

 fauna of this little known district, having reference to the nesting of 

 the marsh harrier, the nesting habits of the bittern, and the taking of 

 ruffs ; he also says ' the gyr-falcon is sometimes seen sailing over this 

 and the adjacent wastes; it boldly attacks the largest of the feathered 

 race ; the stork, the heron, and the crane are easy victims ; it 

 kills hares by darting directly upon them.'f In the time of James I. 

 a great herd of red deer wandered over Hatfield levels and the 

 adjacent wastes of Lindholme, and in the inquisition of 1607 it is 

 said that the number mounted to about 1,000 head, and that the herd 

 is much impaired by the depredations of the borderers. From a 

 curious entry preserved in the parish registers of Finningley in 1737, 

 it is probable that some of the herd remained down to the commence- 

 ment of the 1 8th century. 



In the first twenty years of the present century, ruffs and reeves 

 were common in all the maritime marshes in the north-east of the 

 county, and we have been assured by an old sportsman that he used 

 regularly to. make excursions into the Stallingborough and Imming- 

 ham marshes in the spring to shoot ruffs and dotterel ; a friend also 

 recently told us that he has heard his grandfather, who was a great 

 shooter, talk of seeing the bank between Clee and Tetney in the 

 spring covered with ruffs and reeves, and so tired with their long 

 flight that you might almost knock them down with a stick, and that 

 he could soon shoot as many as he could carry. 



On the same coast and salt-fitties at that time came regularly to 

 nest great numbers of oyster-catchers, Arctic, common and lesser 

 terns, and the ringed plover ; the shelldrake also in the sandhills and 

 warrens, and in the adjoining marsh the hen harrier, spotted crake, 



* The History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme, by the Rev.W. B. Stone- 

 house, M.A., 1839. 



+ In an old map MDCXXVI. of the Isle, before the drainage by Vermuyden, 

 Storkcarre's are marked between Haxey and Wroote, on the east bank of the river 

 Idle (Idille). 



Jan. 1886. 



