Note 2b — NOTES ON PARISHES ROUND HORNCASTLE.

It would appear, however, that water was a more marked feature of the locality 100 years ago. Sir Joseph Banks, writing of the antiquities of Ashby, in an article contributed to “Archæologia” at that time (vol. xii., p. 96), mentions the “sloping hills with brisk rills of water running through almost every valley.” It should not be forgotten that formerly a tract of forest extended all along this district, so that (as I have mentioned elsewhere) a Dutch sportsman spent a whole season in hunting “in Lincolniensi montium tractu,” among the Lincolnshire hills. When that forest was cleared away, as a natural consequence the streams would shrink in volume, or disappear altogether.