INTRODUCTION IxXV 



record for that district of Oxfordshire. Vaccinium Myrtillus, Erica cinerea 

 and E. TetraUx, Polygonatum muUiflorum, Orchis ustulafa, and Cerastium 

 quaternelliim, which are very local on the Oxfordshire side, are much 

 more frequent in the Pang district. 



4. The Kennet district is a large and- unequally shaped tract of 

 country, which is bounded by the districts of the Ock, the Pang, 

 and the Loddon, and by the counties of Wiltshire and Hampshire. 

 It is separated on the north from the Ock district by the ' Ridgeway ' 

 from near East Ilsley to the Wiltshire border. Near East Ilsley the 

 summit of the watershed is about 600 feet in height, and the ridge rises 

 to 650 feet at Cuckhamsley Knob ; the downs above Wantage are 740 

 feet high. Letcombe Castle, a Celtic earthwork where Gentiana germanica 

 is plentiful, is 690 feet above sea level, and the highest point of the 

 watershed is reached on the White Horse Hill, where it attains the 

 height of 840 feet. From this point the ridge sinks to 703 feet at Way- 

 land Smith's Cave, the well-known cromlech, near the Wiltshire border, 

 the traditional burial-place of Baegsaeg, the Danish king, who was slain 

 at the battle of ^scesdune ; of this spot, however. Sir Walter Scott 

 has told a very different tale. It probably belongs to even more 

 ancient and remote times than that of the Danish invasion. 



The western border of the district is the county boundary of Berk- 

 shire and Wiltshire, which passes over Bishopstone Down, by the 

 British fort of Membury, more than 700 feet above sea level, to the 

 beautiful village of Chilton Foliat, where the Kennet enters Berkshire, 

 and then to Hungerford, called by the Saxons ' Ettandune,' where it 

 is said that Alfred in 878, disguised as a harper, visited the Danish 

 camp and afterwards defeated them. Hungerford is 328 feet above 

 the sea. The irregular county boundary then crosses the Kennet to 

 Standen (402 feet , and then runs as far south as Shalbourn (437 feet, 

 where a little stream comes from the base of the Chalk escarpment ; 

 hei-e it turns east along the ridge of the southern Chalk downs by 

 Ham and the hanging wood of Kiever (738 feet), where the gallows- 

 tree still stands in a situation commanding an extensive view down 

 the Kennet valley and over the Lambourn woodlands. Near Butter- 

 mere corner Hampshire succeeds to Wiltshire, and is the boundary of 

 the Kennet district on its southern side, the boundary line passing 

 over Walbury Camp, the highest point of the county, which is 959 feet 

 above the sea. From Walbury Camp the line passes Woodhay Oak 

 Copse and reaches Holt, or, as it is written in the 25-inch Ordnance 

 map, Hatt Common, which is about 360 feet above the sea ; there 

 a more natural boundary to the county is formed by the Emborne 

 stream, which flows by Newbury Wash, Sandleford Priory, once the 

 home of Mary Montagu, Greenham and Crook ham Heaths, till it 

 reaches Brimpton, where the height of the stream above sea level is 



