JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



7 



fen to appear again beyond the Wash at Hunstanton, its greatest 

 breadth is fourteen miles. The oolite runs like a spine through the 

 whole length of the county, and is represented by a narrow band in 

 the north, and south of Lincoln (where it is once cut through and 

 divided by the bed of the Witham), spreading into the wide elevated 

 district known as the ' Heath,' where on its western side it forms the 

 striking escarpment called the ' Cliff,' predominating the level lias 

 and new red sandstones of the Trent Valley. Between these ranges 

 of the chalk and the oolite lies the great central plain of Lincolnshire 

 — greensands, gault, Kimmeridge, and Oxford clays ; these all in 

 South Lincolnshire pass beneath the peats, clays, and gravels of the 

 fens. There is still a third line of elevated land formed by the Lias, 

 Rhsetic, and red-marl beds extending from the mouth of the Trent 

 to as far as Gainsborough. At its northern extremity, near Scunthorpe, 

 is the rich bed of iron ore, twenty-seven feet thick, which has already 

 added so much to the wealth and importance of this otherwise poor 

 and barren district. A section across the county from east to west 

 at its greatest breadth, passes first through the chalky boulder-clay, 

 overlaid in north-east Lincolnshire by a considerable thickness of 

 warp, and generally along the maritime plain by recent alluvial 

 deposits, sand, and clays. In the Humber marshes borings for water 

 show twelve to forty-five feet of clean stoneless warp, with an 

 occasional cockle-shell; beneath the warp is the forest bed, two and 

 a half feet in thickness, resting on about a foot of whitish clay and 

 sand. This old indigenous forest crops out at various places, both 

 within the Humber and the sea coast, at low-water mark, presenting 

 clay beds thickly interlaced with roots, also scattered stumps of trees 

 in situ, identified as oak, beech, elm, birch, holly, yew, hazel, alder, 

 and willow. The only remains of animal life we have found was 

 during the excavation of the new docks at Grimsby — the core of a 

 horn of Bos primigenius . In the peat bed, probably of the same date, 

 which lies below the silt and sand of the Freshney Beck in Aylesby 

 parish, we have dug up bones of the red deer, Bos longifrons, wolf 

 or large dog, wild boar, probably wild cat, and a human ulna, like the 

 rest stained perfectly black with the peat.* Below the forest bed is 



* The great forest of Kesteven in the south of the county, of which relics remain 

 in Grimsthorpe Park, with its original herd of red deer, probably extended far into 

 Fenland proper. The buried forests beneath the peat comprise oak, elm, birch, 

 Scotch fir, yew, hazel, sallow, alder, and willow. Some of the oaks are of 

 immense size, and the wood, a specimen of which is now before me, nearly as 

 black and hard as ebony. Years after the drainage of the West Fen the exact 

 position of the' great trees was made apparent to the fenmen by the rime frost 

 lying longer above them than on the surrounding fen. 

 Jan. 1886. 



