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:—
NEUOPTERA
Sympetrum sp.
HYMENOPTERA
Vespa germanica Crabro cribrarius
V. vulgaris C. albilabris
Bombus lapidarius Halictus leucopus
Bombus hortorum Apis mellifica
Formica rufa
DIPTERA
Platychirus clypeatus Calliphora vomitoria
Scatophaga stercoraria
COLEOPTERA
Geotrupes spiniger Otiorrhyncus picipes
G. stercorarius Psylliodes cupro-nitens
Coccinella 7-punctata Ragonycha fulva
C. variabilis Meligethes æneus
Strangalia armata Necrophorus humator
Polydrusus pterygomalis N. ruspator
N. mortuorum
Strophosomus coryli Aphodius rufipes
HEMIPTERA-HETEROPTERA
(in Fulsby Wood).
Miris lævigatus Leptopterna ferrugata
Calocoris roseomaculatus Œtorhinus angulatus
Orthotylus scotti
C. bipunctatus Nabis lativentris
(In Tumby Wood.)
Those marked * are new to Lincolnshire.
*Piezodorus lituratus (abundant *Onychumenus decolor
on gorse)
Stygnus rusticus (at roots of *Psallus alnicola (on birch)
heather)
*Dictyonota strichnocera (on Asciodema obsoletum
gorse)
Miris calcaratus Lygus viridis (on birch)
Orthotylus ericetorum (abundant
on heather)
SPIDERS.
Anyphæna accentuata Meta segmentata
Epeira gibbosa (a first record) Epeira marmorea (doubtful, not yet
recorded in Britain)
Dictyna arundinacea Xysticus pini
Diœa dorsata (a first record) Epeira sollers
Epeira quadrata Linyphia triangularis
E. scalaris Theridion varians