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THE BECK — A STUDY. 



Rev. EDWARD ADRIAN WOODRUFFE-PEACOCK, L.Th., F.L.S., F.G.S., 

 Vicar of Cadney ; Organising and Botanical Secretary, Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union, 



The days have long- since gone by when a worker, a con- 

 scientious worker I mean, in any branch of thought or study, 

 has to justify and defend his labours from charges of being 

 a waste of time. We, who have been born since the days of 

 Hugh Miller and Charles Darwin, have learnt as truisms from 

 our youth up, that the whole of our education is intended to 

 make us think clearly, and draw accurate conclusions from the 

 facts that we observe ; and conversely, that the conscientious 

 observation of any given class of facts is an education in itself. 

 So I make no apology for bringing- forward a number of simple, 

 and to me very interesting, facts gathered together in the course 

 of some years during my ' studies ' on the brooks and streams 

 we rightly call becks in Lincolnshire. 



The good old word beck has a very fine history of its own. 

 It is found in all the. Teutonic languages, from old Norse and 

 old Icelandic downwards, but Gothic preserves no form of it 

 whatever. It is used from Cumberland in the north to Lincoln- 

 shire in the south, and in all the intermediate counties which 

 were occupied by Danes and Norwegians. It is employed, 

 especially in literature, to denote a stream with a stony bed or 

 rugged course, such as those of the ' North Contree ' ; but is 

 quite as appropriately applied to our more sluggish and sandy 

 wold and cliff streams, provided they are not dykes of man's 

 design and construction. 



What an open-air and healthy study a beck is, one, say, like 

 that of my native parish, Bottesford, which lies seven miles on 

 the west of Brigg. This little beck rises on a marshy spot 

 on Crossby Warren — which is now a gull pond, an off-shoot 

 from Mr. Sutton-Nelthorpe's famous Twigmoor ponds and 

 flows four miles south, and then five south-west, till it (alls 

 into the river Trent at East Butterwick. My notes were not 

 all made on this one beck — though, as lads, my brothers and 

 I knew it by heart, and had a name for every bend and tree for 

 it has boon my good luck to study a number, but tor fear of 

 detaining you too long I shall not particularise the exact spot 

 where each observation was made. 



1900 September 1. R 



