of the larger Trent; the two, like “John Anderson, my Joe,” and his contented spouse, “climbed the hill together,” to the Lincoln Gap, and hand in hand wended their seaward way, to help each other, perchance, in giving birth to the Fenland; or, according to another theory, in making its bed. Through a long era this union lasted; but, as the old saying is, “the course of true love never did run smooth”; a change geologic came over the scene, and, through force of circumstance, the two, so long wedded together, broke the connubial bond, and henceforth separated, pursuing each their different ways; the one, the Trent, the river of thirty fountains, betaking herself “to fresh woods and pastures new,” after brief dalliance with the Ouse, became bosomed in the ample embrace of the Humber; the other, the humbler stream of the two, retaining its previous course, pursued the even tenor of its way through the flats of the Fenland, with their “crass air and rotten harrs,” to find its consolation in the “dimpling smiles,” but restless bosom, of the shallow “Boston Deeps.” During the period of that ancient alliance of these two streams the tract of country between Lincoln and Boston, or rather between the points now occupied by those places, would be scoured by a greatly-augmented volume of water, and this may possibly account in some degree for the shallowness of “The Wash,” and the number of submarine sandbanks which lie off the mouth of the present Witham. Had the union of the two streams continued to the present time, bringing down their united body of silt, Boston would either never have come into existence at all, or would have been much further from the sea than it is. The precise period at which this riverine union prevailed would seem to be still an open question; and we may say, with Horace, _adhuc sub judice lis est_; for, whereas Professor Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the Government Geological Survey, {103a} gives his opinion that “the gravels which have been laid down by an older Trent, that flowed through the gorge in the Jurassie escarpment at Lincoln, were later than the glacial deposits”; on the other hand, Mr. F. M. Burton, F.L.S., F.G.S., {103b} who has a thorough local knowledge of the county and its geological features, says there is sufficient evidence “to convince any reasonable mind that the present course of the Trent is not its original one; but that ages ago, in early pre-glacial times, I think, it passed through the Lincoln Gap to the fenland beyond, which was then open bay.” We may well say with Pope: “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” {103c} This, however, is too large a subject for a chapter on the geology of Woodhall Spa; but this brief reference to it may serve to show the visitor, who has the taste and inclination for such pursuits, that there are still subjects for interesting investigation in our neighbourhood, on which he might well employ his capacities for research.