Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood / Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter

by J. Conway Walter

CHAPTER III. NATURE NOTES.

The great charm of Woodhall Spa is its “Rus in Urbe” character. The visitor can hardly go for ten minutes in any direction from his hotel or lodgings but he finds himself by the woodside, among the hedgerows or on the heath, where the jaded spirit, or the enfeebled frame, may draw fresh energy from the bracing air, richly charged with ozone, and even at times perceptibly impregnated with the tonic flavour of the iodine. The author of a recent publication

who visited Woodhall Spa, in 1897, says: “Woodhall is as unlike the usual run of fashionable watering places as one can well imagine. It is a charming health resort—situated on a dry, sandy soil, where fir trees flourish—there are wild moors, purple with heather, and aglow with golden gorse; a land of health, and the air deliciously bracing. I do not think (he adds) there is a purer or more exhilarating air to be found in all England, or for that matter out of it.” [27a]

Of the surrounding scenery it need hardly be said that we are not in the land of “the mountain,” though we have the “brown heath, and shaggy wood,” and occasionally, not far off, “the flood,” sung of by Scotia’s bard. But within sight are the Wolds, whose precipitous sides have, to my knowledge, astonished strangers, who, judging from the country traversed by the railway from Peterborough, expected to find the whole county as level as a billiard table. [27b] The flatness of the country, however, is amply made up for by other redeeming features. Within a mile of the Spa a view is obtained stretching more than 20 miles, with the grand Cathedral (which Ruskin says is “worth any two others in the kingdom”) crowning the “steep” hill of Lincoln on the horizon. “’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,” says the poet Campbell; and this prospect, slightly undulating, with extensive woods barring it at intervals, and village spires rising from their midst, seen through the marvellously clear atmosphere which we often enjoy, is a sight worth seeing.

An old writer [27c] describes the air as being “crass, and full of rotten harrs”; and Drayton,

in his “Polyolbion” [28a] speaks of the “unwholesome ayre, and more unwholesome soyle”; but that condition of things has long ago passed away. Another charming effect of these distant prospects is the glorious sunsets. Kingsley, in his “Hereward the Wake,” truly says, the “vastness gives such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else in these isles.” A writer, whom I have already quoted, says, “I am inclined to think the sky scenery, if I may be allowed the term, the finest and most wonderful in the world.” As to “its gorgeous sunsets, you look upon an atmosphere saturated with colour, so that it becomes opalesque; and the sinking sun, seen through the vibrating air, is magnificent. From the slopes of far California I have looked down upon the sun dipping into the wide Pacific, amid a riot of colour, but nothing like this.” [28b] Nor is this any exaggeration. The visitor to Woodhall may see it for himself, and the writer has often gazed upon it. Towards evening the soft blue of the distance becomes gradually lit up by the lowering sun with the most gorgeous and varied shades of purple, gold, and ruby, until he sinks below the horizon in a blaze of crimson glory. Then follow, softer, more mellowed tints of violet, pink, emerald green, exquisite greys, and varying hues of the most delicate kinds, until they slowly fade away into the shades of night, or the silvery sheen of the moon.

For the student of nature, there are special attractions in the botany of the neighbourhood; scarcely less in its ornithology. The wild, four-footed creatures also are in unusual variety; and within easy reach the antiquarian will find objects of very special interest.

In these pages it would be impossible to treat of all these subjects fully.

I will take botany first. And I would here make the preliminary observation, that, in specifying different plants to be found in the near vicinity, I shall not indicate exactly the habitat of each, for the sake of preserving to Woodhall Spa in the future some of its choicest attractions. The track of the invading tourist is too often marked by massacre. A French ambassador, describing some years ago the country life of our gentry, said that one of the first proposals, made after breakfast by the host, would be, “Let us go out and kill something”; and this national tendency has disastrously affected our Flora as well as our Fauna. A

writer has said, “There is a base sort of botanist who prods up choice treasures wantonly to destroy them. They are murderers, to be classed with those who have stamped the quagga out of Africa, or those who fly to firearms if Nature sends a rare migrant creature of air, or earth, or water, in their way.” Go through our English lakes, as the writer did recently, after not having visited them for several years, and you will find, for instance, the falls of Lodore, where once the parsley-fern abounded, now entirely stript of it. Just as—to take a parallel case—in a certain stream in Borrowdale, where some years ago the writer caught so many trout that the widow, in whose cottage he lodged, offered to keep him any length of time gratis, so long as he would supply her with fish at the same rate; now, in that stream hardly a fish is to be caught, from its so constantly being “flogged” by the tourist. The same holds good, though, so far, in a less degree, at Woodhall. “Ichabod” may be writ in large characters over the record of some of the plants once plentiful. I shall, therefore, leave the botanist, with few exceptions, to hunt out the specimens for himself, only stating that they exist. But is not this, after all, the chief charm of his pursuit to the true lover of Nature? To have everything found to hand for him may indeed lessen his labours, but it robs him of all the gratification with which he can exclaim “Eureka,” as his eyes rest upon the long-sought prize which he has found for himself. The difference between the true botanist and the sportsman has been thus defined: “The sportsman seeks to kill; the botanist seeks to find, to admire, and to preserve.” Would that it were always so. From the great difference in the soils in the immediate neighbourhood, varying from the lightest sand to the stiffest clay, or from the peat and bog of the fen to the gravel of the moor, or the leafy mould of the wood, there is also a very great variety of wild plants. The late Rev. R. H. Webb, author of “The Botany of Herts,” was some years ago a frequent visitor at Woodhall Spa, and he assured the writer, that in all his experience he had never known so large or so interesting a variety as was to be found in this neighbourhood. On one occasion the writer, collecting wild plants for a flower show, gathered, in the course of a morning’s walk, more than 110 different specimens. Probably the rarest plant was the Silene Quinque vulneralis, the discovery of which led to a lengthy correspondence, it being rarely found in England, though fairly common in Jersey.

It was growing in a field which now forms part of the garden of the Victoria Hotel. The alterations necessary to make that transformation extinguished it, or rather buried it out of sight; but as some correspondents gave instances where it had recurred in localities in which it had for years been unknown, there is no absolute reason why it should not also reappear in this case. Should it do so, we can only cry, parce, precor, to the too ruthless collector. The Osmunda Regalis, again, a few years ago was very plentiful; the writer has had plants of it which grew to be three, four, and even five feet in height, but it is now quite extinct. Not only so, but the writer, finding this to be the case, replanted some roots of it in 1897, where he fondly hoped they would escape observation, but, on going to look for them the following year, he found the soil dug up all round the place by the trespassing marauder, and not a trace of them was left.

The following plants have been mentioned by different authorities as among those which are be found. The Rev. E. Adrian Woodruffe Peacock, secretary to the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union, says: “We may expect to find some of the following rare plants—Ranunculus Hederaceus, Corydalis claviculata, Raphanus Raphanistrum, Silene Quinque-Vulnera (most rare), Silene Anglica (not so rare), Vicia Bobartii, Cotyledon Umbilicus, Sedum Villosum, Sedum Reflexum, Drosera Anglica, Epilobium Tetragonum, Campanula Ranunculoides. At a meeting of the Alford Naturalists’ Society the secretary exhibited the following plants, obtained from the Woodhall district, presenting a striking difference to the plants found about Alford, owing to the sandy moorland soil of Woodhall:—Calluna Erica (ling), Erica Tetralix (cross-leaved heath), Artemisia Vulgaris (mugwort). Marrubium Vulgare (white horehound), Teucrium Scorodonia (wood sage), Hydrocotyle Vulgaris (white-rot), and the Hardfern (Lomaria Spicant); also fruiting specimens of Solidago Virgaurea (golden rod), Lepidium Campestre (field pepper-wort), Cotyledon Umbilicus (wall penny-wort).”

I conducted the members of the Lincoln Natural History and Archæological Society round the neighbourhood a few years ago, in the month of April, and they reported 39 plants as being then in flower, the most interesting being Saxifraga Tridactylites (stone-crop), Draba Verna (vernal whitlow grass), Erodium Cicutarium (hemlock, stork’s bill), Cotyledon

Umbilicus (wall pennywort), and the Tussilago Petasites (butter-bur), Stellaria Holostea (greater stitchwort); also Parietaria Officinalis (wall pellitory), not yet in bloom, and in a pond Stratiotes Aloides (water soldier) in great abundance.

More recently I conducted the members of the Lincolnshire Natural History Union through the district, in the month of August, and the following is a list of their chief “finds”; Hieracium Boreale (hawkweed), Lysimachia Vulgaris (yellow loose strife), Melampyrum Pratense (yellow-cow wheat), Tycopus Europeus (gipsy-wort), Solidago Virgaurea (golden rod), Malva Moschata (musk mallow), also a white variety of the common mallow (Malva Sylvestris), the two cresses, Lepidium Smithii and L. Campestre, Sparganium Simplex (simple bur-reed) the mints (Mentha Sativa, and M. Arvensis), Lythrum Salicaria (purple loosestrife), Geranium Columbinum (long-stalked cranesbill), Scutellaria Galericulata (skull-cap), Polygonum Hydropiper (water pepper), Lysimachia Nemorum (yellow pimpernel), Rhamnus Frangula (buckthorn), Gentiana Pneumonantha (blue gentian), Erica, Cinerea (heath), Malva Rotundifolia (round-leaved mallow), Marrubium Vulgare (white horehound), Calamintha Acinos (basil thyme), Eriophorum Angustifolium (cotton grass), Narthekium Ossifragum (bog asphodel), Galeopsis Bifida (hemp nettle), Senecio Sylvaticus (ragwort), three St. John’s worts, viz. Hypericum Pulchrum, H. Quaodrangulum, and H. Perforatum, Spergula Arvensis (corn spurrey), Saponaria Officinalis (common soap wort), Drosera Rotundifolia (round-leaved sundew), D. Intermedia (intermediate variety), Epilobium Macrocarpum (long-fruited willow herb), E. Parviflorum (small flowered do.). E. Palustre (marsh do.), Circœa Lutetiana (enchanter’s night-shade), Pimpinella Magna (greater burnet saxifrage), Valeriana Sambucifolia (elder-leaved valerian), Solidago Virgaunea (golden rod), Gnaphalium Sylvaticum (high land cudwort), Hieracium Umbellatum (narrow-leaved hawk weed), Alnus Glutinosa (common alder), Juncus Acutiflorus (sharp-flowered rush), Anagallis Pallida (pale-coloured pimpernel), Pedicularitis Sylvatica (dwarf red rattle), Pinguicola Vulgaris (common butter-wort), Viola Flavicornis, also called V. Ericetorum (yellow-horned violet). [31] The Cichorium (succory) and

Parnassia Palustris (grass of Parnassus) are found in the neighbourhood. The Myrica (“Gale” or bog-myrtle) is very abundant, and a useful preventive against the moth if placed in wardrobes or drawers. Like the Osmunda, the Pinguicola (butterwort), appears to be now extinct, owing either to drainage or to the ever-offending collector. Another interesting plant which at present is not to be found, though it may at any time recur, [32] is the Holy thistle, or Mary thistle (Carduus Marianus). Formerly plentiful, a mile away from the Spa, about the ruins of Kirkstead Abbey, it has been of late years entirely stubbed up by successive tenants of the farm. There is one locality, about three miles distant, to which specimens were transplanted a few years ago, and where it still survives. It also grew not far from the church of Old Woodhall, but there also farmers’ operations have exterminated it. Called the “Milk” or “St. Mary’s” thistle, because its white-veined leaves were traditionally said to have been lashed with the virgin’s milk, it is doubtless a survivor from the gardens tended and cherished by the monk of old. The Botrychium Lunaria (moonwort) and Ophioglossum (adder’s tongue) are found within 300 yards of the Baths (occasionally intermittent for a season); the Trichomanes (English maidenhair) grows in one solitary place on the inner walls of a closed well, though entirely unknown anywhere else for many miles round. Several varieties of ferns grow very luxuriantly. Before leaving the botany of the neighbourhood, I would direct the reader to an appendix at the end of this volume, giving a list of a considerable number of plants with their local vernacular names, which was compiled for me by a naturalist, who made this subject his special study during a prolonged sojourn at Woodhall Spa.

There are several different mosses, and a great variety of fungi.

This varied flora conduces to a corresponding

variety of insect life. On one of the occasions referred to above, the following beetles were found:—Loricera Pillicornis, Geotrupes Spiniger, G. Stercorarius, Elaphras Cupreus, Leistotrophus Nebulosus, Hister Stercorarius, Aphodius Fœtens, A. Fimitarius, A. Sordidus, 22-Punctata, and Sphœridium Bi-pustulatum.

Of butterflies there is not a great variety. The Papilio Machaon (swallow-tail) used to be common about the reedy pools and bogs near the Moor; but owing to drainage and clearance none have been seen for several years. The huge heaps of the aromatic ant were formerly very common in the woods close to the Spa, but the eggs being a favourite food for the pheasant, and collected by the keepers for that purpose, there seems to be none left.

CHAPTER IV. DENIZENS OF THE WOODS, &c.—BIPEDS.

I now proceed to speak of some of the birds of the locality. And again it may be said, as in the case of the wild flowers, that, from the variety of soils, there is a corresponding abundance in the species frequenting the neighbourhood of Woodhall. Unfortunately another remark made of the flowers also applies to the birds. “Ichabod” may be written in large characters over the records of several. In the writer’s youth, an old couple lived close to the Tower on the Moor, about a mile from the Spa, in a cabin of their own construction, made chiefly of sods, then locally called “bages.” [33] Old Dawson, or “Tabshag,” the soubriquet by which he was more commonly known, lived with his wife the rather wild existence of a squatter, on the waste, under sufferance from the owner. He kept a pig, and was wont to boast that he possessed the highest pigsty and the lowest barn in the country, because the sty was a structure of his own erection, in the old brick tower, above the level of the surrounding ground; while his straw was stored in an excavation (still existing) several feet below. At that time between the Tower and Bracken Wood there was a stretch of waste land, several acres in extent, consisting of bog, interspersed with tussocks of coarse

grass, and straggling alders and birches, still known by the name of “The Bog’s Nook,” or corner. [34a] On this ground the common green plover—Vanellus cristatus—then commonly called the “Pyewipe,” [34b] bred in large numbers; the eggs were, as they are still, regarded as a delicacy, and old “Tabshag” used to make a considerable sum of money every year by sending hampers of these eggs by coach up to London for sale. So familiar he was said to be with the habits of the bird that he could tell by its cry how many eggs were in the nest. [34c] This land is now under cultivation, and the plaintive cry of the plover is heard no more, or only seldom. The plover, indeed, is still with us, but in numbers lessening every year. There are probably not now as many plovers’ nests in the whole parish as there formerly were in a single ploughed field. The writer, as a boy, was somewhat of an expert in finding these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she deems most unnoticeable.

Sixty years ago black game were found on the moorland called now “The Ostler Plantations,” [34d] but though one still heard of them “in the forties,” they were then either extinct or a rapidly vanishing quantity. At the same time also the “boom” of the bittern might still be heard in the marshy parts of the same ground, but they are also now among the has been’s.

No more shall bittern boom,
No more shall blackcock crow:
For both have met their doom,
The sport of human foe.

From the character of the Ostler ground, formerly a very secluded tract of mixed wood, moor, and morass, it has been frequented by a great variety of birds. [35] The heron bred there within the last twenty years, a solitary nest remaining in a clump of trees in the south-west corner next to Tattershall, until it was blown down by a gale, and, the particular tree being shortly afterwards felled, the bird never returned. Drainage and the destruction of trees by the woodman’s axe, or by accidental fires, have so dried the ground as to reduce greatly the numbers of certain birds of aquatic or semi-aquatic habits. The coot “clanking” in the sedgy pools is no more heard. The moor-hen with those little, black, fluffy balls which formed her brood scuttling over the water to hide in the reeds, is rarely seen. The wild duck has, indeed, in one or two instances nested near a still-surviving pool within the last ten years; a nest was once found by the writer among the branches of a pollard willow, overhanging a pool, some five or six feet from the ground. He has also shot teal on odd occasions lying in the open; but both these birds are now rarely seen, and the same may be said of the snipe, “jack” and “full.” The latter were once plentiful, so that it was a common occurrence to put up a “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the “ballast ponds” beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of

Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our shot, eventually to appear nicely cooked on a toast before us at table. But of late years drainage has reduced their numbers. Although we could, of course, never at Woodhall, compete with the shooter on the Irish bogs, where as many as 100 or 200 are sometimes shot in a day; yet I could at one time almost always get a brace when I wanted them by trying certain spots which were their regular resort, and among my notes I find this: “Nov. 16, 1872, shot Bracken wood, got five woodcock, making 20 in three days.” [N.B.—Bracken wood, as the visitor may not know, is within one field of the Bath-house at Woodhall Spa.] Some years ago certain sportsmen (?) in this neighbourhood used to go to the sea coast every year, in October, at the time of the arrival of the first flight of woodcock (the second flight is in November), and shot them in considerable numbers, when they were resting, exhausted by their flight; hardly a creditable practice, and unworthy of a true lover of nature. A wood in Kirkstead, named “Bird-Hag Wood,” was formerly a favourite haunt of the woodcock, and I have shot many in it; but it was cleared away in the seventies. [36a] Woodcock occasionally breed on the moor, and a nest was found some years ago within 80 yards of the road to Horncastle, opposite the Tower on the Moor. Among my notes I find this: “Dec. 5, 1872, we saw about a dozen woodcock in Bird-Hag Wood, but only three were shot.”

I have just mentioned Bird-Hag and its woodcock. Pleasant memories of that wood have lingered with more than one sportsman. A former poetic owner of Kirkstead has written of it thus [36b]:—

Remote Bird-Hag, that favourite preserve,
To crown some chosen day, the choice reserve
Where noble oaks their autumn tints display,
And fern gigantic checks the sportsman’s way
But well is toil and trouble there repaid,
By the wild tenants of that oaken shade,
While rabbits, hares, successive, cross your road,
And scarcely give the time to fire and load,—
While shots resound, and pheasants loudly crow,
Who heeds the bramble? Who fatigue can know?
Here from the brake, that bird of stealthy flight,
The mottled woodcock glads our eager sight,
Great is his triumph, whose lucky shot shall kill
The dark-eyed stranger of the lengthy bill
Unlike the pheasant, who himself betrays,
And dearly for his daring challenge pays.
Small notice gives the woodcock of his flight;
Not seen at once, at once he’s lost to sight.
Yet short his flight, and should you mark him down,
The chances are that woodcock is your own;
But quick the hand, and no less quick the eye,
Would stop him as he hurries by;
Few are the birds, whate’er may be their sort,
More try the skill, give more exciting sport.

A few words may be said on the pheasants and partridges; and first of the former. The breed on the Ostler ground have a history. The late Sir Henry Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Court, used to rear, in large numbers, a white breed of pheasant, and as, with the exception of the Ostler ground, he, with his brother, had almost the whole of the shooting, extending from Scrivelsby to the Witham, they spread over that ground, and sought a kind of asylum in the dense cover of the Ostler plantations. Further, the writer’s father-in-law imported an Indian breed, called the “Kalege” pheasant, a very handsome bird; and these two strains have affected the breed on that ground, and, doubtless, have also had their effect on pheasants in the neighbourhood generally. White broods of pheasants are from time to time hatched on the ground; also piebald varieties are not uncommon. In the year 1898, a cream-coloured specimen was shot. Some of the cocks have at times a decided fringe of blue or purple in their plumages from the Kalege mixture.

As to partridges: It is only in recent years that the French, or red-legged breed (Cannabis rufa) have established themselves here. In the sixties, though said to have been introduced into England by Charles II., they were almost, if not entirely, unknown here. The writer shot them in Cambridgeshire in the fifties; and from the south-eastern coast and counties they have persistently spread, until now we have them everywhere. In the first instance, probably, they were brought across “the silver streak” by a gale, like the sand grouse, of which we have read, on the coast of Yorkshire. But whereas

the sand grouse were immediately shot as curiosities, the red-leg, being a bird (as every shooter knows) given to running, knew how to take care of himself, and, like many another unwelcome intruder, he came to stay. The flesh is decidedly inferior in flavour to that of the common English brown partridge. I well remember a practical joke being played on a Woodhall keeper. The “Frenchmen,” as they were called, had only just arrived. A party of us were out shooting, and a red-leg was shot. The keeper, seeing the new and handsome-looking bird, was very proud of it, and though he had never yet tasted one, he loudly proclaimed, in his ignorance, that it would be as good in the eating as fine in the plumage. A day or two after we were out shooting again. Luncheon time came, and we lay stretched on the sward under a spreading tree, on a hot day in September, where the ladies joined us, bringing the refreshment. Cold partridges were among the fare, and instructions had been given beforehand that the “Frenchman” should be specially reserved, to hand to the keeper. In due course the Captain passed on to the keeper—as being specially favoured “above his fellows,” by the attention—half of a partridge. Nothing was said, and we all busied ourselves with the viands before us, but the keeper was under our careful observation. Presently his features were seen to be considerably distorted by wry faces, as he turned the leg or the wing about in his hands, while picking them, with some difficulty, to the bone. Probably the bird was not only a “Frenchman,” but a tough old cock into the bargain. At length he could stand it no longer, and, looking round at us, he said, “Dal it! Captain, but this bird’s a rum ’un.” “Don’t you like it?” was the reply; “why, it’s the handsome Frenchman you admired so much, when it was shot the other day.” “Well, then,” said the keeper, “I wish all such Frenchmen were at the battle of Water-gruel. I’ll back the English.” [38]

There are some rather curious facts in connection with the brown English partridge and the French variety. Though different in their habits, and, it is said, even hostile to each other, they yet, in some instances, consort. I once shot on the moor three brown and one red-leg, out of the same covey, all young birds. They had evidently been reared together in one brood, and the old birds were of the brown species. Mentioning this to a friend of large experience, he told me that he had known several instances where the eggs of the two kinds had been found laid in the same nest. The eggs are, of course, easily distinguishable, those of the common partridge being of a greenish drab colour, while those of the red-leg are of a dull, cream colour, covered with small brown spots. I have been informed by another authority that the eggs of the red-leg have also been found in the nest of an outlying pheasant. [39] A curious provision of nature, conducing to the preservation of the species, may be here mentioned as interesting; the partridge, while sitting on her eggs, has no scent. On one occasion a man was consulting me about a tombstone at St. Andrew’s Church, Woodhall. We walked into the churchyard together, and stood conversing opposite the grave in question. I was aware that a partridge was sitting on her nest concealed in the grass between that grave and the next, and therefore would not approach very near. Suddenly I perceived that he had a terrier with him, which was very busily hunting over the churchyard. I begged him to keep it in. He was rather

indignant, and replied that it could do no harm in the churchyard. I remarked that he was not aware that within eight or ten feet of us a partridge was on her nest, and I did not wish her to be disturbed. He thereupon called in his dog, but that only brought his dog nearer to the nest, hunting the while; and the dog actually passed over the nest without scenting the bird. [40] The eggs were hatched the next day, and that doubtless accounted for her sitting so closely. Whether or not from an instinctive consciousness of this safeguard is not for me to say, but the partridge is rather given to selecting her nesting place near a highway or a footpath. I have known several instances of this, and only last year I repeatedly saw both the parent birds sitting on their nest together, on a bank close to a public footpath which was daily traversed.

To show how closely a partridge will continue to sit, under very trying circumstances, I give here an anecdote of what occurred in a parish adjoining Woodhall Spa, as it was related to me by the chief witness, the Squire himself.

In a meadow adjoining Roughton Hall, a partridge made her nest in a slight depression of the surface. The meadow was, in due course, mown, the mower passing his scythe over her without injuring her, and unaware of her presence, the depression having still enough grass to conceal the nest. The field was afterwards “tedded,” i.e., the grass was tossed about by a machine, which again passed over the nest, still leaving her unscathed and unmoved. In the process of “cocking,” the field was next horse-raked, the rake passing over the nest, with the same result. One of the haymakers, however, nearly trod on the nest; this drove the bird off, behind him, so that he did not observe it. But a friend was near at hand. The squire, seeing the bird fly away, went to the spot, found

the hidden nest, and counted in it the unusual number of 19 eggs (promise of a good partridge season, weather permitting). He at once removed to a distance all the hay lying near, to prevent her being disturbed again, and watched the result. Within a quarter of an hour the partridge quietly returned to her nest. Ten days later she successfully brought off a brood of seventeen, two bad eggs remaining in the nest. Of course, as the hatching time draws near, the mother, feeling the young lives under her, sits more persistently than at an earlier period; but surely this mother partridge exhibited a remarkable instance of fidelity to maternal instinct, after passing through no less than four trying ordeals.

Of wild pigeons we have three kinds: the common woodpigeon or ringdove, of which there are large flocks; the stockdoves, which go in pairs, and (as their name implies) build their nest on a solitary stump or tree, or occasionally in a rabbit hole. The turtledove, though common in the south of England, is a migratory bird, and in these parts not a constant visitor. A “wave” of them spread over the Midland counties in 1895, and since that they have been seen in smaller numbers. The late Mr. J. Cordeaux, F.R.G.S., M.B.O.U., one of our greatest authorities, says that its note is lower and more of a querulous murmur than that of the ringdove. In size it is not much larger than a missel thrush.

The first of these pigeons is the bird named the “Culver,” in old writings, as Spencer sings in romantic ditty:—

Like as the culver, on the bared bough,
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate,
And in her song breathes many a wistful vow
For his return, who seems to linger late,
So I, alone, now left disconsolate.
Mourn to myself the absence of my love,
And sitting here, all desolate,
Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove.

Of woodpeckers we have on the moor and in Bracken Wood at times, three kinds: the common green species (picus viridis) which is generally plentiful; the lesser spotted (picus minor), not seen every year, but occasionally; and, still less frequently seen, the larger spotted (picus major). Of the former of these spotted kinds, seeing three together, I shot one a few years ago; and the keeper shot another for me more recently, for our Naturalists’ Museum at Lincoln.

Of the “birds of prey,” so called, the greatest part are extinct, or nearly so, too often from a mistaken belief in their destructiveness;

whereas they are really useful allies of the farmer, if not also of the sportsman. In the cause of the latter, they, for the most part destroy (if they destroy game at all) the weakly members, so conducing towards keeping up a vigorous breed, and for the farmer they destroy smaller vermin, the mice which, but for them, would multiply (as they have done in several places) until they become a plague. In the year 1890, a very large bird was reported as being seen about the woods near Woodhall, but I could not get a sight of it myself, nor could I get anyone else to give a description of it, except that it was very large. After a time it disappeared from Woodhall, and was reported as being seen for a time about Revesby, and on November 8th an eagle was shot by the son of a farmer residing at Tupholme Hall, in a wood at Southrey belonging to Mr. Vyner. It proved to be a male bird, in good condition, measuring 6ft. 7in. across the wings, and weighing 11lbs. I rode over to see it, but it had been sent to the taxidermist to be stuffed. It was a sea eagle (Haliactus albicilla). The kite (milvus ictinus) used to be common 40 years ago; its presence being notified by our hens cackling, and ducks quacking, as they called together their broods, when they espied it soaring at a considerable height above. If a reckless chick, or duckling, neglected to take the warning, and seek shelter beneath the mother’s wings, there was for a moment a rushing sound, a general confusion in the poultry yard, a half-smothered scream, and the kite flew away with a victim in its claws. [42]

I have seen this more than once myself. The kite is now quite extinct in this neighbourhood. The same may be said of the buzzard (buteo vulgaris). Although their food was chiefly mice and small birds; perhaps occasionally game, but not generally; since, though a very fine bird in appearance, they were not rapid enough on the wing to overtake the partridge in full flight; yet the keepers waged war against them “to the knife.” Many is the buzzard I have seen nailed up with the pole-cats and other vermin in the woods at Woodhall. But they are now seen no more, and a handsome and comparatively harmless ornament of our sylvan scenery is gone beyond recall.

The Hen-Harrier (circus cyaneus), a more active bird than the buzzard, is another of the “Ichabods.” Its last known nesting place was on the top of “The Tower on the Moor,” near Woodhall. As a boy, the writer has climbed that tower for the eggs, and he has now a very fine specimen of the old bird stuffed, measuring about 40 inches across, from tip to tip of the wings. These birds were wont to fly at higher game than the buzzard, and doubtless did at times destroy partridges; but they also fed largely on water-rats and frogs, and were not above gorging themselves on carrion. The female is larger than the male.

The beautiful little Merlin (Falco Æsalon) was also seen, though not common, twenty-five or thirty years ago. It was a very plucky little bird, and I have seen one strike down a partridge larger in bulk than itself. This is gone, never to return.

The Sparrow-Hawk (Accipiter fringillarius) survives, although in diminished numbers; and this indeed is the only one of the hawks against which “my voice should be for open war.” It is very destructive and very daring in the pursuit of its quarry. A connection of my own was sitting in a room facing the garden at the Victoria Hotel, Woodhall, when a sparrow-hawk dashed after its prey, broke the glass of the window, and fell stunned on the floor of the room. The female in this kind also is larger

than the mate. This bird will kill young ducks and chickens, and partridges, and even pheasants.

The Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) also still survives, and we do not grudge it a prolonged lease of life. It feeds chiefly upon mice and small birds, cockchafers, and other insects; is a graceful object as it hangs lightly hovering at a considerable height in the air; with its keen vision detects its small prey half hidden in the grass or stubble, and then with lightning rapidity, drops like a stone upon it, and bears it away. I have kept kestrels and sparrow-hawks and tamed them; and the former will become tractable and almost affectionate, but the latter is a winged Ishmaelite, and very treacherous, and if allowed a little liberty, it generally ends in his making his escape. [44a]

Owls are still, I am glad to say, plentiful. They are amongst the farmers’ greatest feathered friends, killing enormous quantities of mice, which otherwise would damage his crops. [44b] We have three kinds on the moor or in the woods: 1st—the barn owl, or screech owl (stryx flammea); 2nd—the wood or brown owl (synnium aluco); 3rd—the horned-owl (asio otus). The two last are very much alike in both size and colour, but the last has two tufts of feathers rising on each aide of the head, from which it gets its name of horned-owl. I have a note among my shooting records: “Dec. 5th, 1872, shot Bird Hag Wood, in Kirkstead, put up about a dozen owls.” These would be the “horned” kind. Five were shot on that occasion, but as a rule they have been carefully spared, one only occasionally being killed as a specimen for stuffing. Within the nineties, being out with my gun, on the moor, when the

ground was covered with snow, I passed by a solitary thick Scotch fir, when an owl flew out. I wanted a specimen for a friend who was staying with me, and I shot it. The report created quite a commotion within the tree, and some twenty owls were immediately flying about me. Not being likely to settle in the snow, and apparently dazed by the glare of the sun reflected from the snow, I left them as quickly as I could, to recover their composure, and return to the sheltered quarters in which they had congregated. Hunting, as they do, almost entirely by night, they have little opportunity of interfering with the game, nor is it their propensity to do so. [45] There are three very ancient hollow oak trees in “The Arbours” Wood in Kirkstead. These are a favourite resort of the barn owl.

The carrion crow still nests on the moor, although the eggs are taken every season. But the old birds are very wary, and manage to keep out of shot. The common rook, however, of late years, has got a bad name, as having taken up the marauding habits of the genuine crow. Owing to the improved cultivation of land, there is not now the supply of grubs on which the rook used to feed, and they have taken to hunting for the eggs of partridge and pheasant, and may be seen “quartering” the ground as methodically as a pointer or setter. They are strongly suspected of killing the young as well as rifling the nests of eggs, and the Scotch keepers complain of their depredations on the moors, among the young grouse.

A writer in the “Yorkshire Poet” (of August 22, 1898) says that black game are decreasing in the Border counties, as the rooks destroy the eggs.

This completes the list of the larger birds frequenting the neighbourhood. As I write this chapter, a letter from an old friend says that he well remembers the number of night-jars

which were to be heard “churring” about Woodhall on a summer’s evening. This bird (caprimulgus Europœus), locally called fern-owl, comes to us about May. I have a note: “May 23rd, 1873, the first night-jar heard.” During the daytime, the visitor, walking quietly through the woodland paths near the Victoria Hotel, may, if he has a keen eye, see the night-jar lying flat upon the branch of an oak, hardly indeed perceptible, owing to its colour being so near that of the brown bark. Then, towards evening, it may be seen taking its short and wonderfully rapid flights, and you may hear its bills snap together as it catches the moths and cockchafers on which it feeds. It breeds on the moor, the nest generally being laid on the ground among the bracken; whence its name of fern-owl. The old idea of its sucking the goat or cow, from the former of which it gets its classical name caprimulgus (as well as the English equivalent), is, of course, long since exploded. [46a] The churring note is seldom heard except when it is at rest on a branch of a tree.

The brilliant little Kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), the most gay in colour of all our birds, may still sometimes be seen, darting about the only rivulet which we can boast of at Woodhall, and which rejoices in the unattractive name of “The Sewer,” [46b] although its water, welling up at its source near Well Syke Wood, is beautifully clear and pure. The occurrence, however, of the bird here is rare. An old inhabitant of Kirkby assures me that it is not uncommon on the river Bain, in that parish; and of late years, partly

through the writer’s influence, it may be seen on the rivers Bain or Waring, in the heart of Horncastle, unmolested, and even fed, by the people.

The Grey Fly Catcher (Muscicapa Grisola) is fairly common on our lawns, where it will sit quietly on a garden seat, or roller, and thence take its short jerky flight after the flies. I have known it to nest year after year, at the Vicarage, in a hole in the wall, where an iron ventilator was broken.

The Wryneck (Yunx Torquilla) is a somewhat uncommon bird at Woodhall, though a pretty one. For several years it also frequented the Vicarage garden, sometimes four or five of them, during the summer months. One year there were so many that I shot one and had it stuffed, and I found that at the same time a noble Marquis was having two stuffed, as being rather rare. It is called in some parts of the country the “weet” bird, from its peculiar note; other authorities say that the note is represented by the words, “Peel, peel,” or “Peep-peep.” I should myself say “Snipe, snipe” was nearer to the sound, and a writer compares it to the sound of Punch, in the old show of “Punch and Judy,” which I think comes nearer to my own interpretation. The body of this bird is in colour a mixture of grey and brown, but its tail and wings are most beautifully marked with dark zig-zag bars, which make it very handsome. In size it is between the blackbird and the lark. Like the woodpecker, it has a very long tongue, which is covered with a glutinous matter, and which it inserts into the grass roots or tree bark, in search of its food. [47]

I give here a list of birds which I have stuffed, all of which were killed in this neighbourhood:—Night-jar (Caprimulgus Europœus), wry

neck (Yunx Torquilla), buff blackbird (Turdus merula), razorbill (Alca Torda), little auk (Mergulus Alia), ruff (Machetes Pugnax), green sand piper (Totanus Octaopus), snipe (Scolopax gallinago), water rail (Rallus Aquaticus), golden plover (Charadrius Pluvialis), woodcock (Scolopax Rusticola), large spotted wood pecker (Dendrocopus Major), hawfinch (Coccothraustes Vulgaris), cuckoo (Cuculus Canorus), jay (Garrulus Glandarius), French partridge (Cannabis Rufa), turtledove (Turtur Auritus), horned owl (Asio Otus), hen harrier (Circus Cyaneus), kestrel (Falco Tinnunculus), peregrine falcon (Falco Peregrinus), piebald pheasant (phasianus colchicus), buff pheasant, cormorant (phylacrocorax carbo), jay (corvus glandarius), heron (ardea cinerea), horned owl (asio otus).

In times gone by, never to return, the numbers and variety of wild fowls frequenting the Witham, with its “sykes and meres,” was something extraordinary. Charles Kingsley doubtless wrote, if not of his own knowledge, yet, at furthest, at second hand, when he gave the following description: “Grand it was, while dark green alders and pale green reeds stretched for miles . . . where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedgebird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around . . . far off upon the silver mere would rise a puff of smoke from a punt, invisible from its flatness. Then down the wind came the boom of the great stanchion-gun; and after that another sound, louder as it neared; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge, and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skeins of terrified wildfowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings; while, clear above all, sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of the wild swan.” “Prose Idylls,” The Fens.

The living clouds on clouds arose,
Infinite wing! Till all the plume-dart air
And rude resounding shore was one wild cry.

Of the swans, we may observe that not only did this bird, in its wild state, frequent the Witham and the Fen waters, but the swannery was a valuable possession. The Abbots of Bardney and Kirkstead owned swanneries on the Witham. (“Archæol.” vol. xvi., p. 153). The swans of various owners were distinguished by marks on the upper mandible, and there were no less than 97 different swan marks on the Witham. A rhyming list of the birds of the Witham is given in Drayton’s Polyolbion (song

25), too long to quote here; suffice it to say that one parish alone, near Boston, some 60 years ago, sent 30,000 wild fowl in a year to London—(Thompson’s History, Boston). The bird’s captured by net were dunlins, knots, ruffs, reeves, red-shanks, lapwings, golden plovers, curlews, godwits, etc. One fowler stated that he had so taken 24 dozen lapwings in one day, and four dozen and nine at one time.—Stevenson’s “Birds of Norfolk,” vol. i., p. 57. Other birds shot by the fowlers were mallard, teal, widgeon, whimbrells, grebes of several kinds, and the “yelping” avocet. A relative of the present writer owned a decoy, where some 20,000 wild ducks were taken, within his own recollection, in one season. [49]

We now come to the last bird which I shall name in this somewhat lengthy list; a goddess among birds, as someone has almost literally called her, “œmula divini suavissima carminis ales”; and the old Scotch poet, William Drummond, of Hawthornden, says:—

Sweet artless songster! thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres—yes, and to angels’ lays.

while quaint old Isaac Walton says: “She breathes such sweet music from her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think that miracles are not yet ceased.” The nightingale was first heard in my own garden, at the vicarage, Woodhall Spa, in the spring of 1876. Having heard it at Cambridge, in the South of England, and also in Italy, I immediately recognised the note, and at first was delighted at the arrival of this new visitor to Woodhall Spa, who did not come needing the water, and complaining of aches and pains, but

to delight everyone with its rich flood of song. And having thus found its way here, it has further found the attractions of Woodhall so great that, although favouring no other place in the neighbourhood, it has continued its annual visits ever since, and has brought its kindred in increasing numbers. But, although charmed at first with its melody, the novelty wore off; and when, night after night, there were three or four of these birds waking the echoes beneath my bedroom window, trying in jealous rivalry each to outdo the other in compassing the whole gamut, “in the rich mazes of sound,” my admiration considerably abated, and I became rather disposed to vote the performance a veritable surfeit of song, to the utter banishment of much-needed slumber. Before, however, I had arrived at this prosaic way of viewing the “Queen of Song,” I composed in its honour the following lines, with which I shall close this chapter on the Birds of Woodhall:—

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
2 a.m., April 27.

How from that tiny throat,
Songster of night!
Flows such a wealth of note,
Full of delight;
Trembling with resonance,
Rapid and racy,
Sinking in soft cadence,
Gushing with ecstasy,
Dying away,
All in their turns;
Plaintive and gay,
Thrilling with tones aglow,
Melting in murmurs low,
Till one’s heart burns?

Once in the wilderness,
By desert well,
Hagar in loneliness,
With Ishmael,
Sighed to the silent air,
Tears on her glistening;
Yet to her, even there,
Angels were listening,
Noting her prayer.

Even so singest thou,
Not to thyself,
Mayn’t there be list’ning now
Some fairy elf,
Silently sitting near
Thy dark retreat,
Drinking with grateful ear
Thy music sweet,
Ringing so clear?

No! not alone art thou;
One there’s above, e’en now,
“Whose mercy’s over all,”
“Who sees the sparrow fall;”
“To Him the night is day,”
He hears thy matin lay,
High o’er us all.

Through the hushed, slumb’ring air,
Thy accents raise,
For all his loving care
Incense of praise;
Thrilling with happiness,
Full with content,
Still asking His goodness,
Prayer with praise blent.

Little thou mayest be,
Yet art His care;
He, too, has given thee
Gifts rich and rare.
Still, then, thy voice upraise,
Still chant thy Maker’s praise
While we are rapt in sleep,
Still thou thy vigil keep;
Still let some earthly cry
Go to our God on high;
Humbly, yet fervently, piercingly call,
Call for His watchfulness over us all.

CHAPTER V. DENIZENS OF THE WOODS, &c. QUADRUPEDS.

It is the inevitable, if regretful, duty of the recorder of the past to have to inscribe “Obiit” over the mention of many an individual who comes under his notice, and this applies to the four-footed animals, as well as to the birds and the wild flowers, of Woodhall. Of some of the most interesting, it must be said that they are gone, and their place knoweth them no more.

The first I may mention is the Badger. This animal used to be fairly common in these parts; whether it is now quite extinct is difficult to say, because its nocturnal habits, and very retiring disposition, prevent it coming much under the observation of man. It is supposed still to harbour in the rocks at Holbeck, some nine miles from Woodhall. A specimen was captured at Woodhall about the year 1885, frequenting some rabbit holes in a bank, at that time belonging to myself, and within 100 yards of the present blacksmith’s shop on the Stixwould-road. Another was captured a few years before in the adjoining parish of Martin, which I have stuffed. At an earlier date one was taken by a man named Thomas Norris, at Well Syke Wood, some two miles from Woodhall Spa.

About the year 1889 one was seen for some months in the Northern Dar Wood, in Woodhall. The keeper, doubtless with murderous intent, tried to find its burrow, but did not succeed. It was not killed so far as is known, but disappeared. Another was killed in June, 1898, at Mavis Enderby. In 1903, two badgers were killed at Asgarby, and one at Asterby in 1904. In 1899 our local pack of hounds, the South Wold, ran a badger, instead of a fox, over several fields, until he took to ground, and was afterwards killed by one of the party, as he kept his head out of the hole. It should hardly be a moot

point whether the extermination of the badger is an advantage or not, although a good deal has been written on both sides of the subject. Its skin makes the “sporran” of the kilted Highlander, and its hair makes our shaving brushes. Though it may be found occasionally in an enlarged rabbit burrow, it is not there to prey on the rabbit; for (as Major Fisher assures us in his interesting work, “Out-door Life in England,” 1896) its diet is mainly vegetarian, and what animal food it indulges in is mice, frogs, an occasional hedgehog, with beetles, snails, and worms; and especially it is very partial to the grubs of the wasp. It is very cleanly in its habits; sometimes occupying the same “earth” with the fox, to the great advantage of the latter, as it clears away the putrid matter brought in by Reynard, and so prevents his contracting the mange, to which he is very liable, from his own untidy propensities. [53a] Being thus not only comparatively harmless, but also serviceable to the sportsman, it is much to be regretted that continued war should be waged against these creatures. [53b] Unfortunately, old prejudices are but slowly overcome. By a statute enacted in the 8th year of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 15, and confirmed by subsequent statutes, provision was made for the destruction of what were then deemed “noysome foule and vermine,” and the price of 1s. was set on the head of every “fox and grey,” i.e., badger. This act continued in force down to 1863. But the old ideas concerning the badger have been long exploded among those who know anything of its habits. The badger, further, is the only representative of the bear family in this country. A scion of that race, whose bones are found in our fossiliferous caverns, co-eval with the mammoth and prehistoric man, he, if any of our existing animals, may boast of “blue blood in his veins.” The nobleman, whose ancestry came over with the conqueror, is a parvenu in comparison with him. Surely the principle of Noblesse oblige

alone should ensure for him a shelter in our woods and wastes. [54a]

The next to be mentioned of our ferœ næturæ, also the object of constant persecution, and growing, consequently, rarer every year, is the Otter. The parish of Thimbleby adjoins Woodhall Spa on the north, indeed, a large slice of it is now included in the recently created civil parish of Woodhall Spa. At the further end of Thimbleby an otter was killed in the year 1898, at a water mill on the river Bain, the miller erroneously supposing that it would kill his ducks. Shortly before, another specimen had been shot by a keeper on the same river, at Goulceby, its mate fortunately escaping. Soon after, a young specimen was seen several times disporting itself in the Horncastle Canal. It there escaped the vigilance of many would-be assassins, and gradually worked its way towards our neighbouring river, the Witham; but there it fell a victim to a gunner, who descried it in a drain near Tattershall Bridge, in Billinghay Fen. Another specimen was afterwards shot among the dykes of Walcot Dales, near the Witham, and still another in the neighbouring parish of Martin, a few years ago. Here again this persistent slaughter is much to be regretted. The otter is not the enemy to the fisherman which it is too commonly supposed to be. In the “Badminton Library,” the Honourable Geoffrey Hill says: “People are beginning to find that the otters kill and keep down the coarser fish, especially the eels, which live on the spawn and fry of the better sorts.” Mr. E. Daubney, writing from the banks of the Dart, says: “They eat frogs, rats, birds, fish, et id genus omne, but of nothing are they more fond than the eel; for this they will give up the finest and most fresh-run salmon.” [54b] In our own neighbourhood, in 1901, two young otters were shot on a farm at Sturton; they were at a pond which abounded in eels, and had doubtless by the eels been attracted from the river Bain, a mile distant, where they could only get trout.

A naturalist, who watched some otters at their home, night and day, for more than two months, says that he only saw them take three trout; the first fish taken was an eel, the second a chub, or roach. (“Country Life,” illustrated, Vol. VI., No. 134, July, 1899.) Another authority [55a] states that the stomach of one specimen examined “was full of larvæ and earthworms”; while a fourth writer [55b] says, “Otters will eat celery, potatoes, young shoots from the hedges; and especially have they a liking for the two first.” The writer has seen a dead salmon lying on a Highland river bank with the shoulder eaten away by the otter, their peculiar habit being to take only this part, and never to return to the body again. [55c] But even their attacks on the salmon have indirectly a useful effect, for, as one of the authorities already quoted (Mr. E. Daubney) observes: “If a salmon pool is visited by otters, the salmon are hustled, and so made to bestir themselves (often when sickly, and reluctant to move), and so make the effort to get down to the sea, to return again enormously increased in size and condition, and in this way the otter does the sportsman a service in sending the salmon down to recruit in the sea; just as, in turn, the sea-lice which fix upon the salmon when recruited in the salt water, so harass the fish, as to drive it once more up the river again into the fresh water, when it may afford sport to the angler.” [55d] It is not generally known, and it has even escaped the notice of our greatest naturalists, that the otter utters a shrill whistle when calling to its mate or young, which might be easily mistaken for the note of the kingfisher or sand-piper. This has been noticed by Mr. F. B. Whitlock, in the “Naturalist” for 1895, p. 381. The great stronghold of the otter is the broads of Norfolk, where, in the sluggish, reedy water, he can get

plenty of eels, snails, and so forth. In our own neighbourhood, if the war and extirpation goes on, he will soon be a memory only.

The next wild animal to be named as fairly common at Woodhall is the Fox. The locality, indeed, has been for many years a stronghold [56] of Reynard, as was to be expected, in a district where the woods are so extensive, although by no means so extensive as they were within the writer’s recollection. On one occasion, some 14 or 15 years ago, we had the Burton hounds, and the South Wold, over the same ground, in the same morning, within hearing, if not within sight, of each other. The Ostler Ground, especially from the thick and warm cover afforded by the heather, may be said to be a nursery for foxes for the supply of the neighbourhood. Not long ago there were six earths; and there are still three, which are carefully preserved; and the bark of the dog-fox or the answering scream of the vixen may be heard almost any night, in different directions, while out foraging. So thick is the cover, in parts, that the hounds frequently fail to penetrate it; and, after the pack have gone away without a find, I have almost trodden upon a fox, on one occasion upon a brace of them, still lying snugly among the “ling” in security. The fox does much less harm than is commonly supposed. It will not disturb other game if it can get rabbits, and it will not take rabbits if it can get rats. A very old sporting farmer has repeatedly assured me that although he had a rabbit warren near his farmstead, the rabbits were left undisturbed, and even his chickens were safe, so long as there were rats to be captured in his corn-stacks, or in the banks about his farm-buildings. [57]

The first fox which the writer ever saw, was brought by a Woodhall man, named Hare, to his father. It had been caught in a trap by the leg, and had attempted to bite its own foot off, in order to effect its escape. It was kept until the injured limb had recovered, and was then sent to his friend, the M.F.H. The writer’s own recollections of fox-hunting go back to the days of the famous Jack Musters, the Squire of Colwick and Annesley, who married Mary Chaworth, the object of Lord Byron’s passionate admiration. Sometime in the forties he hunted our own South Wold country. He was indeed “a character.” Though said by the Prince Regent to be “the most perfect gentleman he had ever met,” yet, in the hunting field, his language and his actions were most violent. The writer has still clearly impressed on his memory an occasion at Woodhall, when, as a boy of 12 years old, mounted on a small pony, and with the hounds running hard, he endeavoured to open a gate for the impatient M.F.H., and, on his not being able to accomplish this quickly enough, he was assailed with such a flood of invective, and torrent of oaths, that he was forced to withdraw from the attempt in confusion and bewilderment. But, if the sportsman who crossed his path was not spared by “Jack,” as he was familiarly called, neither was any unfortunate hound which offended him. On one occasion, a young hound, at High-hall Wood, near Woodhall, was guilty of chasing a hare. The whole “field” was in consequence pulled up; one of the whips was ordered to bring the delinquent forward. The thong of his hunting crop was twisted round the hound’s neck, and while he on foot held the poor brute in this way, the other whip dismounted and belaboured it with his whip until he was himself too exhausted to flog any more. The whole field were kept looking on at this display of wholesome (?) discipline, and when it was over the hound was left lying on the ground, almost strangled and a mass of contused weals, to recover its consciousness and limp after the departing pack, as best it could. The painful impression made upon the young mind of one devoted to animals, and tender of their feelings, remains still as an unpleasant memory, from which it recoils.

At one of our meets, a fox was found in Bracken Wood, which, after giving us a good run round the neighbourhood, eventually took refuge in a cottage near High-hall Wood. Entering by the open door, it mounted the ladder which formed the staircase to the one bedroom above; there it crept under the bed. The hounds hunted all round the premises, but the door having been shut by the occupier, an aged, retired keeper, and there being a strong wind which blew the scent from the door, his retreat was not discovered. He remained in this place of concealment until the hounds had gone to a safe distance, and then, descending by the ladder, bolted out of the door and made off, verifying the adage of Erasmus (older than “Hudibras”),

That same that runnith a awaie
Againe maie fighte ane other daie.

The well-known cunning of the fox is shewn in the following:—A favourite “find” for many yeans has been Thornton Wood, some three miles from Woodhall Spa; and a frequent line for the fox to take was (and is) from that covert to Holme Wood, near Scrivelsby. To accomplish this the Horncastle Canal and the small river Bain have to be crossed. The writer, as a boy, has swum the canal on his pony, at the tail of the pack; but usually riders have to make a detour by a bridge, between the first and second locks on the canal. During the intervals of ten minutes or a quarter of an hour required for this, the hounds are left to themselves. It happened on two or three occasions that in this interval the scent suddenly failed, and the fox was lost; casts were made up and down the river, but without success. On one occasion, a labourer, working in the grass field between the canal and the Bain, saw the fox cross the canal by the lock doors, over which there was a narrow plank-bridge for foot-passengers. It then made across the field for the Bain. He saw it pass out of sight down the banks of the river, close by a willow tree, overhanging the water; but it did not emerge on the other side. With the lack of quick wit, characteristic of the clod-hopper, it did not occur to him to mention this at the time. He told it, however, afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion, when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted and went into the water, and, poking about the roots of the willows, dislodged Reynard, concealed under the hollow bank, and immersed under water, except his nose and mouth, by which he was hanging

suspended from a fang of the tree roots. Surely Reynard’s clever ruse deserved a better fate than the death which speedily followed.

The following incident occurred under my own observation. I was out shooting in Woodhall. In a certain field I had put up a hare, which went away, without a shot. Passing, in due course, to the next field, I observed an object sitting, so far as I could make out, in a crouching position, in the middle of the field, and it looked in the distance like a man. I proceeded towards it, and soon perceived that it was a fox, sitting up on his hindquarters. At this moment a hare, presumably that which I had put up just before, entered the field and cantered leisurely in the direction of the fox. As sportsmen are aware, the hare, though able to see behind it, or on either side, does not, from the peculiar position of the eyes, see so well straight in front. In this case, the hare never perceived the fox until it was within a few feet of it; whereupon it stopped short, and the two sat up facing each other, evidently mutually fascinated, as the bird is said to be by the snake. They thus remained motionless, or powerless to move, for some minutes, until my nearer approach attracted their attention and broke the spell, whereupon they both bounded off in different directions. This, I am told by an authority, was a case of neurasthenia, or nerve-paralysis. A not quite similar occurrence was recorded some little time ago. A farmer saw a pheasant go to roost in a tree, standing alone in the field. Presently he saw a fox approach, go to the tree, and look up at the pheasant. After pausing for a moment, regarding the bird, he proceeded to run rapidly round the tree in a narrow circle. This he did for some time, continuing his circuit without intermission; when, to the farmer’s astonishment, the pheasant fell from its roost, and before it reached the ground was seized by the fox, who went off with his prey to a neighbouring plantation. This would seem to have been a case of hypnotism, rather than neurasthenia. The bird was mesmerised, or made giddy, by the fox’s circular motion, and literally fell into the operator’s arms.—(“Spectator,” January, 1898). The writer, when travelling in Germany, once met a German gentleman, who had visited country houses in England, and had conceived a great admiration for the English sport of fox-hunting. “Ah,” he said, “we have nothing like it in Germany. It is a grand institution. It makes you good horsemen, good soldiers, good judges of country and distance.” To those who

would object to fox-hunting on the score of its cruelty, I would quote words used at a church congress, by Colonel Hornby, master of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. Speaking on “The Ethics of Amusements,” he said: “The exercise of hunting is productive of the most beneficial effects on both mind and body. There could be no hunting without suffering to the animal hunted, but this was greatly exaggerated. These animals were born to be hunted by other wild animals; we had destroyed the latter, and our hunting was more merciful. The pain inflicted was no equivalent to the pleasure afforded to hounds and horses, leaving men out of the question. The true lover of sport was a lover of mercy as well. Every sportsman, in the true sense of the word, did all in his power to lessen the suffering.”—Quoted, “Guardian,” Oct. 17, 1894, p. 1,620.

The days are gone by when gentlemen “of the cloth” were common in the hunting field. Yet I have known some of the hardest working clergymen, and the most sincere, earnest Christians, who saw no excessive cruelty in the chase. We have no “Jack Russels” among us now; the last of the type who lived in our neighbourhood found a dead fox in his pulpit, when he ascended it to preach his sermon one Sunday morning; and though he did not deliver a funeral oration over it, it was said that he buried it with as much loving reverence and genuine grief, as if it had been a Christian parishioner.

A meet of the foxhounds at that favourite tryst, the “Tower on the Moor,” near to Woodhall Spa, presents a pretty and lively scene. Besides the red-coated sportsman, there are riders, with horses of every degree, from the barebacked, or rudely saddled “screw,” to the 100 guinea or 200 guinea hunter; and from the “weedy” hack to the long, elastic-legged animal of racing blood. There are numerous vehicles, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, with their varied occupants, from the butcher’s light cart to the phaeton or the drag. There are numbers on foot, of both sexes; some of the men, staid of mein and beyond middle life, have already walked their miles; townsmen, for once, breaking away from their trade, or their business, and bent once more on breathing the fresh air on the heather, and listening again to the “echoing horn,” as it vibrates through the woods. There are ladies, on horseback, eager for the burst across country “in the first flight”; there are ladies on cycles, not yet arrived at the

degree of perfection to enable the fair riders to take a “bee-line,” but yet, from the speed attainable, able to make rapid detours, and if they study the wind, and are familiar with the “lay” of the country, likely to see almost as much of the sport as the best-mounted. All are bent on the healthy enjoyment of this thoroughly English pastime. Their thoughts might find echo in the old hunting song,

Tally-ho! Tally-ho!
Let the foreigner know
We are Englishmen: so,
Tally-ho! Tally-ho!

And who shall say that the pleasure is confined to them? Someone has said: “The horses enjoy it, the hounds enjoy it, and no one can say from experience that the fox does not enjoy it as well.” Then comes the M.F.H., with his beauties, all in “the pink” of condition. A moment’s delay for pleasant greetings between all and sundry, and the hounds are quickly thrown in for business; their tails, and little more, wave above the long ling and the tall bracken. The whips gallop to their points of observation. Presently a whimper or two is heard; then the deeper tone of an old hound takes it up; the rest rally about him, and soon the whole pack join in full chorus. A halloo is heard from a ride, as the fox crosses it; a distant hat is held up to show the line he is taking in the cover, and then a more distant shout of “gone away,” and the whole field are off, helter skelter, as though riding for their lives, sauve qui peut. Such are “the pleasures of the chase,” for which we are indebted to the Little Red Rover: “The sport of kings, the image of war, without its guilt.” (Somerville, “The Chase,” Book I.)

The neighbourhood of Woodhall combines lands of a wild unreclaimed nature, such as the Ostler Ground and other moorlands, in the parishes of Thornton, Martin, Roughton, Kirkby and Tattershall, and closely contiguous, and even mixed up with these, lands which are in an advanced state of cultivation. I have already mentioned a tract of waste, boggy ground, lying between the Tower on the Moor and Bracken Wood, formerly the haunt of wild fowl, and still called “The Bogs Neuk.” The origin of this ground was probably the following:—The old antiquary, Leland, writing of “The Tower,” [61] says, “one of the Cromwelles builded a pretty turret, caullid the Tower on the Moore, and

thereby he made a faire greate pond or lake, bricked about. The lake is commonly called the Synkker.” This “lake,” and all trace of it, have entirely disappeared; but it is probable that the decay of its “bricked” walls, or of whatever the environment may really have been, led to the escape of the water, and the creation of the tract of swamp, which remained until recent years. Similarly the Ostler Ground was, within the writer’s recollection, a much wilder tract, and its woods more extensive than at present. Some 300 acres of wood were destroyed by fire, through accident, about the year 1847. This happened at night, and, seen from a distance, it looked like a vast American prairie conflagration, the heavens being tinged with a lurid light far and wide. At that time the plantations opposite the Tower were of Scotch fir, so dense that the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate. The roads, as I have previously stated, were little more than cart tracts, often shifting; and the whole tract was almost as little frequented, or disturbed, as if it had been in the heart of the Black Forest of Germany. In the centre of this wild were two or three fields belonging to another property, [62a] where roamed a herd of small, shaggy cattle, which, shut out as they were from the rest of the world, became almost wild; and when, on occasions, the foxhounds penetrated to their haunts, they frantically broke through all bounds, and for some days afterwards would be found scattered about the open country around. This tract of wood and moor has been for many years the prettiest bit of wild shooting anywhere in this neighbourhood for many miles round. There is not, at the present time, anything like the amount of game upon it which was to be found only a few years ago; drainage and several very dry seasons, as also two or three accidental fires, having killed much of the ling, and reduced very considerably the amount of cover. Still, to the genuine sportsman who thinks more of a varied bag than of the slaughter of numbers, it affords great attractions, and the writer has enjoyed many a happy day of healthy relaxation, with dog and gun, upon it. [62b] The

variety of birds now, or formerly, to be seen, have been described already. The ground game upon it now, apart from the fox, are the hares and rabbits; of these I shall speak more at length presently. If the Moor ground has afforded fair sport of a wild and varied character, the shooting in the adjoining domain of Kirkstead, in hares and partridges, has been also much superior to the rest of the neighbourhood, with the one exception of Tattershall, which has been nearly as good. On one occasion, being one of a party of five, the writer was stationed at the north-east corner of “The Arbours Wood,” in Kirkstead, to shoot the hares which passed that point, while the rest of the sportsmen walked the wood with the beaters. In the space of about one hour and a quarter, without moving from his position, he shot 56 hares. At one moment he had 16 hares lying dead before him; and he could have shot many more, but that, from the rapid firing, his gun barrels became, at times, so hot that he was afraid to load, and the hares were allowed to pass him, and escape unmolested. [63]

We occasionally find on the Ostler Ground an unusual hybrid between hare and rabbit, a notice of which may be of some interest to the naturalist. As its occurrence has led to a good deal of correspondence, I will give here a summary of the observations made upon it as they were stated by me at a meeting of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union. Among other persons who made enquiry about it was Mr. Walter Heape, of Cambridge, who has made

the subject of hybrids a special study. He asked my reasons for supposing the animal to be such a cross. My reply was as follows:—

(1) The animal is the size of a hare.

(2) Its fur is the rabbit grey.

(3) The head is the shorter, and the ears the more pricked and shorter, of the rabbit.

(4) One which I shot at, and missed in the ling, bolted straight for a hole, as though accustomed to it, and I never knew a hare to go to ground in that ready way.

(5) A tradition has long attached to the Moor that the hare and rabbit do occasionally inter-breed.

Mr. Heape replied:—“I am aware that many naturalists deny that hares and rabbits will breed together. I am not, however, myself of that opinion, but I never had satisfactory proof of such a cross occurring.” Further enquiry led to the following facts:—In the year 1773 the Abbe Domenico Gagliari got two litters from a female hare by a male rabbit. Richard Thursfield also got hybrid’s of these two species. M. Roux, in 1847, established a breed of “Leporides” in Angonleme, where he bred largely hybrids of hares and rabbits, and these hybrids were fertile with both parent species and among themselves. Baron de Gleichen states that at Hoching, Canton de la Prusse, Polonaise, hybrids of hare (female), and rabbits (male) are generally known. He says, however, that M. Brocca, the French savant, states that there are anatomical differences between hare and rabbit which make it, antecedently, improbable that they should inter-breed. I have myself shot three of these hybrids on the Ostler Ground, and have one of them stuffed. In the year 1897 Sir Henry Hawley shot a similar specimen in Haltham Wood, some five miles from Woodhall; more recently (Oct. 4th, 1898), the Rev. C. E. Chapman, then rector of Scrivelsby, shot another in New York Fen; one was occasionally seen on the Ostler Ground in 1898, and one was mentioned in “Land and Water,” March 5, 1892, as having been shot on the Moors, at Parkend, in Northumberland. I may add that a cross between a rabbit and guinea pig is in the possession of a person at Horncastle; and I have lately heard of a cross between black game and the capercailzie in Scotland. But the following somewhat analogous cases have created special interest. Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, has bred a cross between a male Berchell’s zebra and a mare pony, of the Isle of Rum breed, half wild, lent for the

experiment by Lord Arthur Cecil. The pony was jet black; the foal resulting, except over the hind quarters, had as many stripes as the zebra sire, the stripes being fawn colour, with background nearly black. In form it closely resembled a well-bred foal. As another interesting case of a similar kind, Lord Morton has bred a cross between a male quagga and a nearly pure-bred Arab mare; and Lord Tankerville has, more than once, bred a cross between the famous wild Chillingham bull (Bos Urus Primigenius) and a shorthorn cow.

An interesting variety of the hare is also found in Woodhall and the neighbourhood. This is the albino or white hare. Some 30 or more years ago one was frequently seen in the parishes of Langton and Woodhall, and eventually was shot in Thimbleby. They were then, so far as the writer knows, in abeyance for some years. But within the last decade heredity has asserted itself, and they have reappeared in increased numbers, and would doubtless become an established variety if allowed to multiply. In September, 1894, one of the Woodhall tenants killed, in the harvest field, a three-quarter-grown white leveret. In 1896 the writer presented to the Natural History Museum, at Lincoln, a fine albino specimen, also shot in Woodhall, with two small white leverets, accidentally killed in the harvest field at Langton. Since then, attention having been drawn to their existence, a number of instances occurring in the neighbourhood have been recorded. One was shot at Ranby as far back as Oct. 19, 1860; two were seen in Clayworth in 1896; one was shot in Baumber, Sept. 17, 1896; one shot at Thorpe Tilney, in Timberland parish, with slight tinge of brown on the ears, October, 1897; one shot in Timberland in 1895; one being seen still at large in Thorne Tilney in May, 1898; one shot in Branston, September, 1895, half grown; two shot at Bracebridge in 1893 or 1894; one shot in Wispington in 1896. [65] On one occasion, when

shooting in Kirkstead, the writer shot (right and left) a couple of hares with white face and forelegs, one of which he has stuffed.

We commonly speak of the cunning of the fox, but Mr. E. A. Pease, M.P., in his recent book, “Hunting Reminiscences” (Thacker & Co., 1895, p. 119), says: “The hare is really a much more rusé animal than the fox; can steal better away, and, once started, there is no end to her wiles and dodges.” Of this cunning, with a view to self-preservation, I can give instances. It has been maintained that hares never take to water, but a correspondence was carried on in the newspaper a few years ago (see “Morning Post,” Nov. 14, 1892), in which instances were given of their doing so. I have myself seen a hare, which has eluded the greyhounds, swim across a moat, almost surrounding the house in which I am writing; and then steal away to the cover of some large ferns in a sheltered nook in the garden. Some years ago a baronet visited a relative of mine in this neighborhood, and brought with him a pack of beagles. We used to run on foot after these in pursuit of hares. It is known that a hare, when getting exhausted, has not the strong scent of one just started. As we ran over a rough ploughed field, I have seen a hare, when nearly tired out, thrust another sitting hare out of her “form,” and take her place. The pack of beagles passed over the worn-out hare squatting in the furrow, and rushed forward with a fresh burst of music in their rich deep tones, on the strong scent of the hare just set on foot. I passed the squatting hare, but had not the heart to betray her, feeling that she deserved to reap the reward of her cleverness. When hunted by harriers, hares often “double” on their track, and so throw the hounds out. I here give a very clever instance of this, which I myself once witnessed. On one occasion, sitting on the South Downs, watching the movements of a pack of harriers in the distance, I saw “puss” gradually approaching me. In a hilly country like the Downs, a hare, from the great length and propelling power of her hind legs, gains considerably upon the pack in running up hill, and loses ground in a descent. The hare in question had just

descended a steep Down side, the hounds gaining rapidly upon her. It was what may be termed “a squeak” for her life, when, in the “dean” below, [67] she reached, just in time, the shelter of a clump of gorse. Working her way through this, she stole out on the opposite side to the pack, and at a tremendous pace faced the hill, near the top of which I was sitting, by a chalk quarry. In the ascent she distanced the hounds once more, but she was getting done, and, in the gentle breeze which floated towards me, I distinctly heard her panting as she bounded upward. But here her instinctive cunning came into play. The hill top was a few feet above me, some twenty yards away. I sat motionless, and, in her anxiety about her pursuers, she never observed me. She passed me, breathing heavily, and sprang along as far as the hill top; there, just at the brow, she paused, then cantered forward a few yards, returned, and repeated this more than once. Then, turning suddenly towards me, she made four or five huge bounds, only just touching the ground, and dropped into the chalk quarry a few feet below me, and crept under the shelter of some dwarf thorn bushes. Her object was manifest. By passing more than once over her own tracks, on the hill top, she created a strong scent, which the breeze, just catching it at the brow, would carry further forward. By her leaps towards the quarry, she had left but a slight scent, and under those thorn bushes she was doubtless waiting tremblingly the result of her ruse. I remained motionless, watching the issue. The pack came somewhat laboriously up the hill side, keeping close to the line she had taken; and a pretty sight it was, as a large sheet would almost have covered them, as they held on compactly together. They passed, as the hare had done, within a few yards of the chalk quarry; pressed on to the brow of the hill, and thence followed the scent which had been blown on beyond it. Presently there was a check, and the music ceased. The master never thought of “harking back,” his pack having followed a strong scent beyond the brow; but pushed on to a spinney lying on the slope of the next “dean.” I sat for a time longer by the quarry, and presently I saw puss, having recovered her breath, emerge from her hiding place and steal away, bent, doubtless, on reaching some distant secure retreat before her limbs became stiff from the unwonted exertion.

I have known a hare, when hard pressed by the harriers, enter a tunnel under a field gateway; but here instinct rather fails her; for, too often, it is only avoiding one mode of death by courting another. If there is water in the ditch, running through the tunnel, the obstruction caused by her body makes the water rise, and she is drowned; or, if she stays any time in the tunnel, her cramped limbs get so stiff after her exertions, that she cannot get out.

There is one kind of foe which the hare finds more difficult to shake off, or elude, than a pack of harriers or beagles. Stoats, foumarts, polecats, et id genus omne, are becoming scarcer every year; although the writer was recently told of a marten-cat—probably the Pine-marten (martes abietum)—being killed in a tree, and sold for 10s. as a rarity. I was a witness of the following:—Walking, in the small hours of the morning, in a parish contiguous to Woodhall, on my way to a stream where I was going to fish, I saw a hare in a field adjoining the road, which was leaping about in a most extraordinary fashion, starting hither and thither, plunging into the rushes, springing into the air, and performing all sorts of strange antics, which I could only account for, had she been “as mad as a March hare,” as the saying is; but this was in the month of May. Presently she rushed forward, occasionally leaping into the air, towards the fence which separated me from the fields. I expected to see her appear through the hedge, in front of me; but she did not come. Out of curiosity I got over the fence, when I saw the hare lying, a few yards further on, stretched out as though dead. I went up to her, and found that she was, indeed, quite dead; and fast on her neck was a weasel, so gorged with her blood, that its usually slender body was quite bloated. Following the proverbial national instinct, I killed the weasel; carried the hare to a footpath, and left it there, that some labourer passing by might take it home to regale his family.

This incident leads me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, and evidently in a state of the greatest terror. I pulled up in order to discover the cause of this alarm. The rabbit re-entered the cover a few yards further on; but presently,

where it had emerged, I saw a weasel; and then I became aware that a number of these creatures were working through the grass. I watched their movements, following them at a distance, till they had about reached the spot where the rabbit re-entered. Then, feeling a keen sympathy for the poor persecuted rabbit, I charged into the midst of the pack, and by dint of plunging up and down among the startled company, and striking at them with my whip, I succeeded in dispersing them. At the same moment the rabbit, which had no doubt been crouching near, half paralysed with fear, darted out, and passing by me, went away at a great pace, as if rejoicing in the rescue. I pursued the weasels for some distance, and should say there was not less than a dozen. I was much astonished at the enormous leaps which they made in their flight, their long, lithe bodies contracting, and then expanding with a sudden jerk which threw them forward several feet at a time. As to the habit of weasels hunting in a pack, Waterton, the naturalist, mentions that he has seen two old stoats with five half-grown young ones hunting together. [69] Richard Jefferies, in his book, “Round about a Great Estate,” mentions having seen a pack of five stoats hunting in company, and says that a poacher told him that he had seen as many as fourteen so engaged. In the above case, which came under my own observation, the weasels were all apparently full grown and equally agile.

CHAPTER VI. REPTILES, FISHES, INSECTS.

Walking along the path through the wood, from the cross roads, near St. Andrew’s Church, towards the Victoria Hotel, the writer, on one occasion, observed a lady poking with her parasol at some object lying on the ground close to her feet. On coming to the spot he found that she was playing with an adder, which had crossed her path, apparently quite innocent of the danger she was incurring, the serpent still, evidently, having some attractive power for this, too curious daughter of Eve. He at once, by a blow on the head with his walking stick, despatched it, and then explained to her that it was lucky for her that it had not bitten her on the ankle. The adder or viper (Vipera Berus) is, fortunately, not common about Woodhall, but it exists there, and may be seen at times, basking on a sunny bank, or lying among the dead and dry foliage near a path, or on the open heath, where the unwary pedestrian is liable to tread upon it. It is the more dangerous because it is apt to vary in colour, according to the locality which it frequents, and therefore is the less easily observed. The colour is always some shade of brown, from a dull yellow to an olive tint; but it may be specially known by the zigzag, black markings along the back, and its broad head, with V-shaped mark in the centre. Its length is from a foot to a foot-and-a-half, although specimens have been killed as long as four feet. (“Naturalist,” 1895, p. 206.) The female is larger than the male. Its bite is made with great rapidity, so that there is little opportunity to escape it. The poison is very virulent, and we are told that in some cases it has proved fatal, but that was probably in the case of a naturally inflammatory subject. The writer has killed several at different times, on the Moor, near Woodhall. On one occasion, on a hot day in September, when a friend was shooting with him, the dog of the friend was bitten. It immediately howled, and seemed to be in considerable pain. He was in time to see the adder and to kill it. He then hurried off with the dog and caught a train to Horncastle, where a dose of

Eau de Luce was administered, and the dog recovered. Olive oil, also, well rubbed into the bitten part, is said to be an effective remedy, and is often more easily obtainable. Another variety of snake found here is what is commonly called the “slow worm” or “blind worm” (Anguis fragilis), which is generally seen in moist meadow ground. It is from 10 to 16 inches in length, and quite harmless. Strictly speaking, it is a lizard, not a snake. The only other kind is the common grass snake (coluber natrix). This is fairly common. The writer has seen three linked together, lying on a bank in Kirkby-lane, a favourite walk near Woodhall. If taken unawares, without time to escape, it will hiss and make a show of fight, but it is perfectly harmless and defenceless, and usually endeavours to escape as quickly as possible, and will bury itself in the long grass, the hedge bottom, or underground with marvellous rapidity. Like the late Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, the writer has more than once kept a tame snake of this species, and has even carried it about in his coat pocket, to the astonishment of urchins who have seen its head peeping out. In a state of nature they hybernate; but when kept in a room, a favourite resort in cold weather was among the ashes under a fire-grate. If a hot coal fell from the grate into the ashes, the snake would rush out hissing, but presently return to its warm retreat again. Held out by the tail, they will try to climb up their own body, and snap, as if to bite at one’s hand; but their only real mode of defence is to inflate the body with air to its utmost power of expansion, and then emit it again, charged with a strong odour, repulsive enough to drive most things from it. [71a] They are found in length from one foot and a half to three feet; and the writer has seen one killed, from which 32 unhatched eggs were taken, each egg about an inch long. The question of snakes swallowing their young, to shelter them from danger, though asserted by several authorities, I have never been able to prove or disprove, although I have often watched them. [71b]

The Lizard (Zoctoca vivipara) is found in sandy parts of the moor, and sunny banks, but is not very common. Many a time, as a boy, I have caught it, and found, immediately afterwards, nothing left in my hand but the tail, the rest of the creature darting away over the ground, as if none the worse; or, rather, as one might imagine, moving more freely when relieved of the incumbrance. This “casting” of the tail would seem, really, to be an interesting, self-protective effort. As the partridge shams lameness in its movements, to draw away an intruder from its young; or, conversely, as the Russian traveller, pursued by wolves, flings away his children, that he may escape himself; so the captured lizard, as a last resource, casts off its tail, and leaves it, wriggling, to attract the captor’s attention, while its own bodily “better half” seeks safety in concealment.

In the ponds at Woodhall the crested newt (Triton cristatus) and the smooth newt (Triton punctatus) were found by members of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union, on their visit in August, 1893.

Of the fishes of our neighbourhood I have been furnished with the following list by the greatest local authority, who has inherited, and personally acquired, an intimate knowledge of the subject:—Trout (Salmo fario), river Bain; grayling (Thymallus vulgaris), Bain; pike (Esox lucius), canal, ponds, Witham; chub (Leuciscus cephalus), Bain; carp (Cyprinus carpio), ponds—rarely in Witham; rudd (Cyprinus Erythrophthalmus), Witham; bream (Abramis Brama), Witham; silver bream (Abramis Blicca), ponds; roach (Leuciscus rutilus), ponds, canals, Bain; dace (Leuciscus vulgaris), ponds, canal, Bain; blick (Alburnus lucidus), Witham; minnow (Leuciscus Phoxinus), Bain; tench, (Tinca vulgaris), ponds; perch (Perca fluviatilis), canal; loach (Nemachilus barbatulus), canal and river Waring; gudgeon (Gobio fluviatilis), canal, Bain, Waring, Witham; miller’s thumb (Gobio cottus), canal; stickleback or blue-eyed sailor (Gasterosteus aculeatus), Waring and ponds; lampern, or lamprey, or nine-eyed eel (Pteromyzon fluviatilis), Bain and Waring; burbot (Gadus lota), Witham; eel (Anguilla vulgaris), Witham, Bain, and ponds.

On some of these fishes I may here make a few remarks. The grayling, “Thymellus,” or “thyme scented” fish, is not indigenous, but has, of late years, been imported from the small river Eau, at Claythorpe, near Alford; and it is now breeding in the river Bain. It is also

called the “umber,” or “shadow” fish, because it does not lie near the surface, like the trout, but deeper down, and darts up at the fly, like a grey, dim shadow in the water. A recent angling author, referring to this habit of the fish, speaks of casting his fly “on the surface of a deep pool on the Doon, in which the shadowy form of the grayling could be seen three feet below. A fish would shoot up with a rush, seize the fly, and drop backward to the bottom.” (“Angling Holidays,” by C. W. Gedney, pp. 8, 9.) The special month for grayling fishing is August, and onward through the winter. The rudd, found in the Witham, is not unlike the roach, but a thicker fish, with sides and back almost of a green tinge. It has been taken up to 2½lb., but from 1 to 1½lb. is a commoner weight. It acquires its name from its red (ruddy-coloured) eyes. The blick is like the dace, but smaller and lighter in colour; very quick in taking the fly. Its average size is four to five inches. The stickleback, or “blue-eyed sailor,” is found almost everywhere—in pond and stream. It is remarkable for building a nest, almost like that of a bird, attached to the stem of a reed or some other aquatic plant, which the male fish defends with great pugnacity “against all comers.” It may be said to occupy a place among our fishes, analogous to that of the kingfisher among our birds, as being decked with brighter colours than any other kind; especially is this the case in time of excitement, as when defending the nest. It then darts about, with all its spines erect, and flashing with green and gold and red. Anyone who thrusts a stick into the water near the nest may witness this for himself. “Sticklebacks were formerly found in such large quantities in fen waters that they were made a source of considerable profit, being boiled down for the oil they contained, and the refuse sold as manure.” (Thompson’s “Boston,” p. 368.) The miller’s thumb is about the size of a gudgeon, to which it is allied, but has a head broader than its body, whence it gets its other name of “bull-head.” The burbot has something of the flavour of the eel. The lamprey gets its name of the “nine-eyed eel” from nine orifices along the side of the throat, through which the water passes from the gills. It is sometimes said to be poisonous, but the Germans eat them as a delicacy. Carp, of the “Lake” variety, were put into the Witham several years ago, and they are occasionally taken 10lb. or 12lb. in weight. The ordinary pond carp is no longer known near

Woodhall, but they survive in a pond, where the writer has caught them, at Wispington. They are a somewhat insipid fish, although at one time highly esteemed. There was an old saying that the “carp was food fit for an abbot, the barbel for a king.” Tench were found in great numbers in a pond which formerly existed on the site now occupied by “Oranienhof” Villa, within 150 yards of the Victoria Hotel. They have also been taken in the river Witham, but are now thought to be extinct. Very large tench were formerly abundant in a moat surrounding the house where the writer now lives. They are difficult to take with worm or paste, as, by continual sucking, they get the bait off the hook without being caught. The largest, sometimes weighing 3lb. or more, were taken in a wickerwork trap, of the shape of a dice-box, some 3ft. long, with the willow withes pointing inwards at each end. This was baited with a peony, or any gay-coloured flower; attracted by which, the tench found their way inwards, but could not get out. Every pond in Kirkstead has its fish; fish doubtless of ancient lineage, the descendants of those on which monks and abbotts once fattened. In an early blackletter edition of Chaucer, there is a fragment of a poem, called “The Pilgrym’s Tale,” which begins with these lines:—

In Lyncolneshyr, fast by the fene,
Ther stant an hows, and you yt ken.

Todd’s “Gower and Chaucer,” p. iv.

which might well apply to the “hows,” or monastery, of Kirkstead. Every such Religious House had its “fish stews,” or ponds, keeping, as Chaucer says, “Many a bream, and many a luce (pike) in stew, and many a fat partrich eke in mewe.” The Cistercian rules of diet were very severe, allowing only one meal a day, and none but the sickly were permitted to partake of animal food. Consequently, fish were in great demand, and the greater the variety, the more toothsome would be the monastic fare. [74]

Roach abound in the Witham, and attain a very fair size, not unfrequently up to 1¼lb.; and the artizans of Sheffield, and elsewhere, brought by special trains, in hundreds, often carry away with them very fair baskets. Bream of both kinds are very abundant in the Witham. I am told by one angler that he has seen the water crowded with shoals of them, and they are caught up to 6lb. in weight, and even more. I have before me the paper-cut shape of a bream caught near Tattershall, which weighed 5¼lb., was 21 inches in length, and about 20 inches in girth. Chub in the river Bain, between Horncastle and Roughton, and again between Tattershall and Dogdyke, are caught weighing several pounds. They are a wary fish, but, when hooked, fight hard for a while, and then suddenly collapse. The writer has often, in the early morning or late evening, sat by the river fishing for them with black slug, and seen two or three big fish, 1½ft. in length, slowly rising and sinking in the stream, as they examined the bait. A chub was taken in the Bain, in 1898, with the spoon-bait, weighing 4lb. 10oz. The Pike attains a good size in some of the ponds in the neighbourhood, and also in the river Witham. In a large pond, about three-quarters of a mile from the Bath-house, at an abandoned brickyard known as “Jordan’s Pond,” a near relative of the writer, a few years ago, landed a pike weighing between 13lbs. and 14lbs. It was currently reported for several years that there was a much larger pike in this pond, which those who had seen it estimated at 20lbs. weight. A resident near has told the writer that he has seen it, holding across its jaws a captured fish fully a foot long. This pike disappeared, it is believed in the night, in the year 1897. Doubtless the nocturnal marauder has kept his own counsel from that day to this. There is an old laconic expression, “Witham pike, none like,” which is only a condensed form of an older adage,

Ancholme eels, and Witham pike,
In all the world there’s none syke.

The pike of the Witham were evidently famed of yore, for Drayton, in his Polyolbion (Song XXV.), personifying the Witham, says:—

Thus to her proper song the burthen still she bare,
Yet for my dainty pikes I am beyond compare.

Walter de Gaunt (a.d. 1115) granted to the

Abbot of Bardney eight fisheries on the Witham, and a fishery on the Witham at Dogdyke (Dock-dike) was granted to the Abbot of Kirkstead by Philip de Kyme (a.d. 1162), which were privileges, in those times, of considerable value. (Reliquiœ galenœ, Introd., p. xxiii.). Records in the Archives of Lincoln state that when Henry VII. visited Lincoln, in 1486, keeping his Easter there, and “humbly and christenly did wesh the feet of 30 poore menne with his noble hands,” he was entertained at a banquet, to which the Mayor contributed “12 grete pykes, 12 grete tenches, and 12 salmons”; [76a] and on a second visit, after his victory at Stoke field, the Corporation presented him with “2 fatte oxen, 20 fatte muttons, 12 fatte capons, and 6 grete fatte pykes.” “Pike have been taken in the Fens,” says Mr. Skertchly, in his “Fenland” (p. 398), “from 20lbs. to 24lbs. The largest known was taken when Whittlesea Mere was drained. It weighed 100lbs., and was given to the late naturalist, Frank Buckland.” There are fine pike in the lake at Sturton Hall, where permission to fish may generally be obtained; and the present would seem to be an opportunity for placing on record that when, early in this century, the lake, of some eight acres in extent, was first formed by damming the stream which ran through the Park, it was stocked with pike and other fish from the moat which then enclosed the residence of the present writer, Langton Rectory. I find among my notes on Witham pike fishing, that in 1890 one angler [76b] took, in two hours, five fish, weighing altogether 31lbs.; the largest scaling over a stone (14lbs.), measured 35½ inches in length and 19 inches in girth. A few days later he landed fishes of 7lbs. and 5lbs., while another angler, about the same date, secured a pike of 16lbs. But a Horncastle fisherman, [76c] in the same week, captured one of 18lbs. in the Witham near Tattershall. One of our greatest anglers states that his largest pike, taken in the Witham, was 16¼lbs.; that he has landed 23 pike in one day, of all sizes, and 20 the next day, making 43 fish in two days. In the closing week of the season 1898–1899, a season below the average, a pike was taken in the Witham, near Tattershall, weighing 22lbs.

The late vicar of Tattershall, the Rev.

Mortimer Latham, to whose memory the writer would here pay his tribute of regard and respect for as genuine, and withal as genial, an angler as Isaac Walton himself, “knew,” as we might say, “by heart,” the Witham, its finny occupants, and their haunts; and many a fine fish he landed, the shapes of which he kept, cut out in brown paper, in his study. The largest pike he ever took weighed 19½lbs. I have before me, as I write, the paper-cut shape of this fish, lent to me by his daughter; who writes: “It may interest you to know that it was conveyed home in a bolster slip, and was on view in the vicarage courtyard, to the great entertainment of the whole village.” Its length was 38 inches, girth about 21 inches. She further adds: “My father, at one time, caught several tench (now supposed to be extinct in the Witham), and I am proud to say that the last one known to be captured was taken by myself, for being one of the keenest fishermen that even Lincolnshire ever produced, he made us as ardent fisherfolk as himself.” I have also the shape of a perch caught by him, weighing 2½lbs., length 15½ins., girth about 12ins.

No fish is so “coy and hard to please” as the pike. Of them may be said, what someone has said of women,

If they will, they will,
You may depend on’t;
And if they won’t, they won’t;
And there’s an end on’t.

The proverbial “variabile semper” element is their characteristic feature, a living illustration of a line, pregnant with meaning, of Coleridge,

Naught may endure but mutability.

On one occasion, a well-known angler tells me, he fished three long hours in a gale of wind, which nearly carried him into the river, without stirring a fin, and then, an unaccountable change of mood coming over the “water wolves,” through the next hour and a half they “took like mad,” and he landed 42½lb. weight. At the time two Sheffield men were fishing close by, who had been at the work for three days, and had landed only a few bream or roach, and one small jack. Under their very noses he landed three splendid pike, while they looked on thunderstruck. Such are the fortunes of war with fishermen. On another occasion, when the day was dull and calm, and there was nothing, one would have thought, to stir the fish to any animation, he landed at the same spot one pike of 16¼lb., and three of 9lb. odd each. “In fact,” he says, “pike are unaccountable.” In December,

1898, a boy caught a pike of 16lb. weight in the Horncastle Canal, at Tattershall, 3½ feet in length and 9 inches in girth; and another of 11lbs. was taken in the Witham, shortly after; and other cases of 14lb., and so on, are recorded. Pike, as is well known, are exceedingly voracious, and not very particular as to what they eat. A writer in the “Naturalist” [78] states that a pair of Shoveller ducks nested in a disused brickpit, and brought off their young; but a pike in the pit gradually carried them off, one by one, taking one when it was large enough to fly. The same fish destroyed nearly the whole of another brood of ducks, hatched at the same pit. The present writer has himself witnessed a similar occurrence. He at one time kept (as he does still) wild ducks, which nested on the banks of the moat surrounding the house. There were large pike in the moat, and he has frequently heard a duck give a quack of alarm, has seen a curl on the water, and on counting his ducklings, found that there was one less. And if pike are not particular as to their diet—all being grist that comes to the mill—neither are they particular as to the bait, if they are in the humour.

The writer, in a day’s fishing for trout, in a Scotch river, the Teviot, where he took perhaps a score or two in the day, would vary the sport on coming to a deep pool by taking off his flies, putting on stout gimp tackle, with a single large hook, which was run through the body of a small trout, or parr; and would often, in this way, land a good pike or two. Sometimes when drawing in the pike too hastily, it would disgorge the bait and hook, but on his making another cast, and letting them float down the pool again, the pike would return to the charge, unwarned by experience, and be eventually captured. On one occasion, rowing leisurely in a boat on Loch Vennachar, with his rod over the stern, and line trailing behind him, a trout, of a pound weight or so, took the fly, and hooked itself. This was immediately seized by a good-sized pike, and after a hard fight he secured both with gut tackle. Dining with the Marchioness who owned the above river, he was regaled on a 10lb. or 12lb. pike, which the Lady Cecil had caught that day, her boat being pushed along the river by a gillie, himself walking in the water, and she fishing with a single large hook, baited with a piece of red cloth.

We have quoted the lines celebrating the pike of the Witham, and the eels of the Ancholme

(also a Lincolnshire river), but eels were, at one time, abundant also in the Witham. Large tubs containing hundreds of them used to be taken to Horncastle on market days, or were hawked about to the country houses. It is said that as many as 16,000 eels have been taken in one year. If you bought eels from these hawkers, they were brought to your kitchen door alive, and, being difficult creatures to handle, your cook generally got the seller to skin them alive, and they were often put into the pan for stewing before they had ceased wriggling. Hence the phrase to “get accustomed to a thing; as eels do to skinning.” But an eel can only be once skinned in its life, and even the skin, stript from its writhing body, was supposed to possess a “virtue.” If tied round a leg or an arm, it was considered a remedy, or preventive, for rheumatism; and your cook would sometimes preserve the skin for a rheumatic friend. In these days the eels brought to market are few, and not half the size they used to be. Eels, from 2ft. to 3ft. long, and as thick as one’s wrist, were formerly quite common. Eels are supposed to migrate to the sea, and, in the year 1903, a large eel was found, early in the morning, about 100 yards from a large pond, in the parish of Wispington, travelling across a grass field, towards a stream, by which it might eventually reach the sea.

The only other fish which I have to remark upon is the trout. They are not found in the Witham; but the Bain trout are handsome; both the golden, or rich yellow kind, with pink spots, and the purple or mauve-coloured variety, but the former are much finer in flavour. For some years the swans on the Horncastle Canal made great havoc among the young trout and spawn [79a] in the neighbouring river Bain, but the last swan died in 1897. Further, there is now an artificial breeding tank established at Horncastle, managed by Mr. Rushton, for keeping up the supply. Some very fine fish have been taken at different times. My notes record as follows:—In April, 1896, one of the anglers already referred to [79b] caught a trout in the Bain, close to Horncastle, weighing 4lb. 6oz., 23in. in length. The same fisherman, in July, 1888, took another, within half a mile of the same place, weighing 4lb. 10oz., 23in. in length. The son [79c] of a quondam veteran angler,

and himself one of our keenest fishermen, tells me that he, several years ago, assisted his father to land a male trout of 7lb. weight, from the watermill pool at Horncastle. It fought so hard that he and his brother had to rush into the water and take it in their arms, their father’s tackle not being intended for such a monster. [80a] This, however, was surpassed by a trout taken by the late Mr. Robert Clitherow, of Horncastle, a beau ideal disciple of the gentle craft, which weighed 8lbs.

Probably the handsomest trout in the neighbourhood, though not the largest, are those of the Somersby “beck,” “The Brook,” rendered for ever classical by the sweet poem of the late Poet Laureate. In years gone by the writer has enjoyed many a picnic on its banks, when we used to pull off our shoes and stockings, and turn up our trousers—gentlemen as well as boys—to catch the trout by the process called “tickling” them, while hiding in their holes; which the ladies afterwards cooked on a fire extemporised on the bank. The music of the rippling stream haunts one still, as one reads those liquid lines of the poet, themselves almost a runnel:

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles;
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles. [80b]

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the dykes in the Fens, near the Witham, abounded in fish of the coarser kinds, with some goodly pike among them. As a boy the writer has caught many a pike by the process called “sniggling,” i.e., a noose of wire, or gimp, attached to the end of a stiff rod, or stick, which is deftly slipt over a fish’s head, as he basks among the water weeds, and, when thus snared, he is jerked ashore. When shooting in the Fens he has also killed, at one shot, five or six fish crowded together in a dyke. But climatic alterations, and over-perfect drainage, have changed all this. The water now runs out to sea so rapidly that the

Fen drains are dry for a great part of the year, and the fish are no more.

Enough has now been said to show that the visitor to Woodhall Spa, who has a taste for “the contemplative man’s recreation,” [81] may find some employment in its vicinity. Most of the ponds can be fished on asking the farmers’ permission. As to the Witham, although there are angling clubs at Boston and Lincoln, the river is practically open to every one, in the season. It may be added that close to Tattershall station there is a large “ballast pond” containing good pike, and a letter to the shooting tenant, or to Lord Fortescue’s agent, would probably obtain permission to fish. At Revesby there is a reservoir, the source of the water supply of Boston, a large piece of water, which abounds in fish of various kinds. Bream, both of the silver and the carp kinds, are plentiful, running up to 4lb. in weight. Very large eels are taken there. Roach are of a fair size. Rudd are numerous; as also are perch, but small. Gudgeons are plentiful, serving for bait. Pike are abundant. In one case three were taken by the same rod within twenty minutes, one of them weighing 13lb. Another rod took two of 16lb. and 10lb., and it is commonly said that there is one occasionally seen “as long as a rail.” Permission may be obtained to fish here from the agent of the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope, Revesby Abbey. There is good accommodation at the Red Lion Hotel.

As, in the next chapter, I am to enter upon a different branch of my subject, passing roughly speaking, from the organic to inorganic—from the living to the dead—I will here give a few particulars, recently received, which may interest the entomologist. In the month of August, 1898, I conducted the members of our county Naturalists’ Union from Woodhall Spa

to Tumby, through a varied tract of country. The following is a list of the Lepidoptera which were found by one of the members:—

Pieris brassicæ	E. hyperanthus
P. rapæ	Thecla quercus
P. napi	Polyommatus phlœas
Colias edusa	Lycœna icarus
Argynnis aglaia	Hesperia thaumas
A. paphia	Spilosoma mendica (two larvæ)
Vanessa io
V. atalanta	Psilura monacha
Apatura iris	Plusia gamma
Pararge megæra	Geometra papilionaria
Epinephele janira	Cidaria immanata
E. tithonus	Eubolia limitata

Two other members collected the following:—