Some of Pennant’s tours through England, Wales, and Scotland are exceedingly instructive in the antiquities of places, but the most interesting remarks are upon natural history subjects, some of which are scientific and others not at all so. When in Lincolnshire he noticed the fens near Revesby Abbey, eight miles beyond Horncastle, which he says are of vast extent, but serve for little other purpose than the rearing of great numbers of geese, which are the wealth of the fenmen. “During the breeding season these birds are lodged in the same houses with the inhabitants and even in their very bed-chambers. In every apartment there are three rows of coarse wicker pens, placed one above another; each bird has its separate lodge divided from the other, which it keeps possession of during its time of setting. A person called a gozzard attends the flock, and twice a day drives the whole to water; then brings them back to their habitations, helping those that live in the upper stories to their nests, without even misplacing a single bird. The geese are plucked five times in the year. The first plucking is at Lady Day, for feathers and quills, and the same is renewed, for feathers only, four times between this and Michaelmas. The old geese submit very quietly to the operation, but the young ones are very noisy and unruly. I once saw this performed, and observed that the goslings of six weeks old were not spared, for their tails were plucked, as I was told to habituate them early to what they were to come to. If the season proves cold, numbers of geese die from this barbarous custom. Vast numbers are driven annually to London to supply the markets; among them all the superannuated geese and ganders (here called cagmags) which serve to fatigue the jaws of the good citizens who are so unfortunate as to meet with them.” He proceeds, “It is observable that once in seven or eight years, immense shoals of sticklebacks appear in the Welland below Spalding, and attempt coming up the river in a vast column. They are supposed to be the collected multitudes washed out of the fens by the floods of several years, and carried into some deep hole. When, overcharged with numbers, they are obliged to attempt a change of place, they move up the river in such quantities as to enable a man who was employed in taking them, to earn, for a considerable time, four shillings a day by selling them at a halfpenny per bushel. They were used to manure land, and attempts have been made to get oil from them.” “The birds which inhabit the different fens are very numerous; I never met with a finer field for the zoologist to range in. Besides the common wild duck, wild geese, gorganies, pochards, shovellers, and teals breed here. I have seen in the east fen a small flock of the tufted ducks; but they seemed only to make it a baiting place. The pewits, gulls, and black terns abound; the last in vast flocks almost deafen one with their clamour, and a few of the great