JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



9 



Up to the present date Lincolnshire compares unfavourably 

 with other counties* in having no published list of the Mammalia 

 found within its bounds. The last and most interesting addition 

 to the fauna was the wild cat (Felis catus), shot in the early part 

 of March, 1883, in a small plantation close to Bullington Wood, 

 near Wragby.t The marten is sparingly distributed in the chain 

 of great woodlands which extends from Wragby to Bourn, and 

 from information recently acquired we are inclined to think it 

 will be many years before it becomes extinct. The polecat is 

 common ; the otter still lingers both in the north and south ; the 

 badger probably more abundant than in any of the midland counties. 

 The common seal is frequently seen on the coast in the autumn, and 

 on that labyrinth of great sandbanks in the Wash, between Lynn and 

 Wainfleet — of which some, like the Dogshead and Knock, and Seal's 

 Bank, are only covered at high tides — there has been from time 

 immemorial a considerable colony, and doubtless many young are 

 born in the course of the season. The grey seal is also found in the 

 same locality, and with Mr. T. Southwell, of Norwich, J remains the 

 credit of adding this interesting species to the respective faunas of 

 the two counties. § Of the smaller mammals the dormouse is found 

 in the south-west of the county ;|| the red field vole is rare, the lesser 

 shrew local, and the water shrew exceedingly plentiful. 



Lincolnshire in the present day can boast of little of its former 

 ornithological pre-eminence; it was truly described by Fuller in his day 

 as ' the aviary of England, for the wild-foule therein : remarkable for 

 their Plenty — Variety — Deliciousnesse.'f Few and fragmentary are 

 the records which have come down to us concerning the treasures 

 of the fens in the Liber Eliensis,** the Chronicles of Crowland,ft and 



*The list of Yorkshire Mammalia, in Clarke and Roebuck's Yorkshire Vertebrata, 

 includes forty-five species out of a possible sixty-nine. In Mr. T. Southwell's list 

 for the county of Norfolk, altogether forty-one species are named. 



+ For a detailed account of the capture see the Naturalist, Sept. 1884, p. 33; 

 Zoologist, Sept. 1884, pp. 360-1 ; Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich 

 Naturalists' Society, Vol. Ill, p. 676a. 



t Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Nat. Soc, Vol. Ill, p. 670. 



§ We are afraid a similar joint claim cannot be set up in the north of the county 

 in respect to the recent occurrence of Sowerby's whale, Physeter bidens, within the 

 estuary of the H umber, cast up on the shore at Spurn Point in the autumn of 1885. 



|| See Mr. G. T. Rope, Range of the Dormouse in England and Wales, Zool., 

 1885, p. 207. 



% Worthies of England, Vol. II, p. 2. 



** Ed. Stuart, 1848. 



ft Ingulph's History of Crowland, Bonn's translation. 



Jan. 1886. 



