some rich loam with a gravel and clay sub-soil, and a rich light loam with a silt sub-soil in the marsh. The chief crops are potatoes and wheat, but other cereals, roots, and mustard are grown in places, and there are excellent pastures in the marsh. In the Bourn district the soil is fen and loam, with a gravel sub-soil, but there is some clay, the sub-soil also being clay, and the chief crops are potatoes, wheat, and peas. There is also some pasture land. Rich, strong land, varying in width, extends from Barton along the banks of the Humber and the North Sea till the coast of Norfolk is reached. The Barton Street may be said to be the western boundary, and running by way of Brocklesby and Laceby at the foot of the Wolds, and including Louth and Alford, the boundary line then turns inland to the north of Wainfleet, touching Spilsby and Bolingbroke, and going as far as Wragby, it then comes eastward again for a short distance before running due south to Market Deeping. The Isle of Axholme has also some of the best land in the county.
The Wolds extend from Barton to Spilsby, a line drawn by way of Caistor, Market Rasen, and Horncastle representing the inland boundary. Lincoln Heath, that fine barley-growing district, consists of a strip, some four or five miles wide, extending from Lincoln to some distance below Grantham, and a very similar strip of land extends northwards from Lincoln to beyond Kirton. The rest of the county might come under the heading of 'various.' No neater or more profitable mixed farming can be seen anywhere than on the Lincoln Heath and the pick of Lord Yarborough's farms in North Lincolnshire; yet much of this vast tract, some 230,000 acres in extent, has been placed in cultivation within the last 150 years. Clean stubbles and low-cut hedges mark the whole of it; the houses are spacious and pretentious; and the buildings and cottages of a character that cannot be seen elsewhere. Yet this very heath-land was once a dreary waste, and the well-known landmark, Dunston Pillar, was erected as an inland lighthouse to guide belated travellers. The fen-land, too, once a huge morass extending from Cambridge to Lincoln, is now converted by drains into one of the greatest potato-producing districts in the country. An account of the conversion of a tract of 40,000 acres, embracing the Wildmoor and East and West Fens, may be given, as an illustration of the system adopted. Originally a chain of lakes from 3 ft. to 6 ft. deep, bordered by great crops of reeds, the bottom consisted of a blue clay under a loose black mud, 2 ft. to 2½ ft. deep. The water was first drawn off, the mud became fertile soil, the plough appeared, and so generous was the land that, though the cost had been estimated at £400,000, or l0s. an acre, it yielded two and even three crops of oats in succession, of not less than 10 quarters to the acre, valued at £2,000,000, thus leaving a profit of £1,600,000. That district is so nearly on a level with the sea, that when the tide is up there is not fall enough in the drains to carry the water seaward, and so the mouths of the drains are furnished with gates, which, opening from within, allow the drainage water to pass into the sea at low water, but are automatically closed by the rising tide. A catch-water drain was cut at the foot of the higher ground to intercept the water flowing thence, and this was carried across the fen by a separate drain. First windmills were used, and then steam for pumping the embanked districts, and a
