The NATURALIST 



For 1886. 



LINCOLNSHIRE. 



JOHN CORDEAUX, M.B.O.U., 



Great Cotes, Ulceby, Lincolnshire; Convener of the British Association Committee 

 on the Migration of Birds. 



It is somewhat curious that even in the present day so much 

 misconception should linger in connection with the second in size of 

 English shires, popularly invested with fens and fogs, ague and marsh 

 fever; a haunt of wild-fowl and waders, reeds and watercress; where 

 the rainfall is excessive, floods the order and not the exception. One 

 of 'the greatest of modern authors adds to this general prejudice 

 when in commencing his work* he writes 'it was raining down in 

 Lincolnshire,' a remark perhaps as little complimentary as that of 

 Henry VIII, who spoke of the county as 'being one of the most 

 brute and beastly of the whole realm, and of the least experience. 't 

 Even at the commencement of the present century Lincolnshire was 

 comparatively a terra incognita, and was looked upon as the ultima 

 Thule of English counties. This isolation probably was in great part 

 due to its position with the broad frontage of a great tidal river 

 and the sea to the north, east, and south-east, separated also, as in 

 the Isle of Axholme and the fens, by impassable swamps and 

 morasses from the rest of England. Thus it came to pass that 

 Lincolnshire folks were considered behind the age, and it is yet 

 somewhat of a reflection on the literary enterprise of the shire that, 

 notwithstanding the materials ready to hand, it should stand almost 

 alone in having no county history. 



From north to south Lincolnshire extends seventy-five miles, and 

 from east to west forty-five. The area is 1,767,962 acres — the Isle 

 of Axholme containing 50,000 ; of the whole a very small portion, 

 5,762 acres, now remains which is not either cultivated or in pasture. 

 Fuller in quaint language likens it to 'a bended bow, the sea making 

 the back, the rivers Welland and Humber the two horns thereof, 



* Charles Dickens, ' Bleak House.' 



+Froude, 'History of England,' (Ed. 1870), Vol. II, p. 527. 



it 



Jan. 1886. B 



