Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Part 3

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 Ca.n.a.l and the small river Bain have to be crossed. The writer, as a boy, has swum the ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l. 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 gra.s.s field between the ca.n.a.l and the Bain, saw the fox cross the ca.n.a.l by the lock doors, over which there was a narrow plank-bridge for foot-pa.s.sengers. It then made across the field for the Bain. He saw it pa.s.s 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. Pa.s.sing, 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 inst.i.tution. It makes you good hors.e.m.e.n, 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 Amus.e.m.e.nts," 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 paris.h.i.+oner.

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 s.e.xes; 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 s.h.i.+fting; 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, s.h.a.ggy 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 pa.s.sed that point, while the rest of the sportsmen walked the wood with the beaters. In the s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.s 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 a.n.a.logous cases have created special interest.

Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, has bred a cross between a male Berch.e.l.l'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 a.s.serted 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 ruse 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 a.s.serted 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 inc.u.mbrance. 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re 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), ca.n.a.l, 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, ca.n.a.ls, Bain; dace (Leuciscus vulgaris), ponds, ca.n.a.l, Bain; blick (Alburnus lucidus), Witham; minnow (Leuciscus Phoxinus), Bain; tench, (Tinca vulgaris), ponds; perch (Perca fluviatilis), ca.n.a.l; loach (Nemachilus barbatulus), ca.n.a.l and river Waring; gudgeon (Gobio fluviatilis), ca.n.a.l, Bain, Waring, Witham; miller's thumb (Gobio cottus), ca.n.a.l; 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 2lb., but from 1 to 1lb. 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, a.n.a.logous 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 quant.i.ties 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 pa.s.ses 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 1lb.; 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 5lb., 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 Dogd.y.k.e, 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 fis.h.i.+ng for them with black slug, and seen two or three big fish, 1ft. 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 Dogd.y.k.e (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.

(Reliqui galen, 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 n.o.ble 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.