Peacock : The Grey Wagidil in Lincolnshire. 195 



for the foreig-pj savants) the operations of the ' enthusiastic ' 

 collectors were suspended for two or three hours, at any rate on 

 that portion of the headland visited bv the Cong"ress. This was 

 evidently a special concession in favour of the Congress. It was 

 certainly very refreshing to be able to approach the 'dimmer' as 

 he ascended the cliff, and see him gathering, without having to 

 cut the 'catch as catch can' capers so familiar nowadays on the 

 Bempton Cliffs. The great attraction at Bempton now is not 

 the cliffs and the 'dimmer' but the antics of those who eagerly 

 await his arrival over the cliff edge, and their efforts to secure 

 the ' good ' eggs. The dangler of ' dimming* ' is not now in 

 falling blocks of chalk, nor in possible flaws in the rope, but in 

 the possibility of being pushed backward over the cliff by the 

 collectors, who, like the jackdaws on the cliff face, make a 

 dash for the eggs, and secure them amidst many caws and 

 chatterings. Surely some mutually advantageous arrangement 

 might be made between the 'dimmers,' naturalists, collectors, 

 and dealers to prevent this state of things. 



EARTH-SHAKES. 

 In a paper ' On Earth-shakes in Mining Districts ' ('Geological 

 Magazine,' May), Dr. C. Davison gives a diagram of the Barnsley 

 earth-shake which took place on 23rd October 1903. He con- 

 cludes that ' Earth-shakes in mining districts are produced by 

 small fault-slips precipitated by the removal of the coal from 

 the immediate neighbourhood of the fault, or partly, perhaps, 

 by the lowering of the water in that region by pumping in other 

 parts of the mine. In either case the earth-shakes would owe 

 their origin to operations of nature, aided very effectively by 

 those of man.' ^ ^ 



BIRDS. 



The Grey Wagtail in Lincolnshire.— On the afternoon 

 of the loth June I saw a pair of Motacilla melanope Pallas on 

 Cadney Beck, and on Whit-Sunday another pair on a little 

 stream which flows into Kettleby Beck. The last nest I saw 

 was some years ago, by the late John Cordeaux's study window 

 at Great Cotes. From 1873 to 1878 it was not uncommon on 

 Bottesford Beck, but has not been seen of late years, and will 

 not be again, as the once beautiful beck is nothing but a foul 

 sewer from the big villages v^hich have sprung up round the 

 Frodingham Ironworks.— E. Adrian Woodruffe Peacock, 

 Cadney, Brigg, 12th June 1905. 



1905 July I. 



