IN NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE 
7 
to the Geneva Convention. It ought to be possible in future 
war to have, by some general agreement between the powers, 
a regular army corps of men to accompany an army on the 
march and battlefield, whose sole duty should be to care for 
the wounded and the dying horses and baggage animals, and 
see that the happy dispatch of a bullet behind the ear is accorded 
to those who fall. The matter is, I am told, a complicated one, 
because it is difficult to be assured that the men who would go 
out under a flag of truce, and who must be armed with pistol or 
knife, would always behave as non-combatants ; but one urges 
that safe-guards should be sought for, which would ensure 
neutrality, and which would enable a clause of the Geneva Con- 
vention to allow compassion to be shown to all wounded animals 
upon a battlefield. The Rev. F. Laurence, of Weston Vicarage, 
Yorkshire, has had an interview with General Dubois; a deputy 
of the French President, on this matter, and I believe obtained 
from him a promise that the matter would be laid before the 
President, with an assurance that it would obtain his cordial 
approval ; but one wants to rouse public opinion on this matter 
throughout the land. 
H. D. Rawnsley. 
DECEMBER 31st IN NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE. 
HO but a lunatic would have spent the last day of 1898 
trudging amidst bitter driving sleet along the alluvial 
flats of the Humber, some half score miles from 
Grimsby ? The answer is, “ Anyone who is a lover 
of old buildings, such as the Saxon church at Barton-on-Humber 
or the still remaining portion of Thornton Abbey ; anyone who, 
in addition, is an enthusiastic student of nature, for in North 
Lincolnshire something will be experienced far different from 
what most counties afford.” Thus it was that the writer, 
ignoring the weather forecast, started for the Abbey ruins on 
the day mentioned. Quite close to Grimsby one sees moist 
pasture fields containing huge flocks of lapwings — those useful 
birds of lustrous green and purple and snowy white, too 
frequently sold in the London shops as “ fat plovers.” On the 
Humber bank yonder are two or three companies of knots 
stalking up and down along the mud. Tiny little bodies have 
they, no larger than a sparrow’s, but the legs are comparatively 
long and the toes unwebbed, as befit a wader, who is a plebeian 
brother of the dainty snipe. The flocks are very compact, and 
if disturbed by the fowler speedily alight at a bowshot’s distance. 
Yesterday a knot was picked up and examined, it was the victim 
of those cruel loafers who prowl about in winter simply to “ kill 
something.” Out of range of the gunner are the gulls, graceful 
and leisurely, the common, the lesser blackback, the pearly blue 
