By the Rev. Canon Jackson, F.8.A. 291 
ruins, noblemen’s mansions, distant columns, a Cathedral spire, and 
so forth. Having touched a little upon each of these points, and 
their history, you can then fall back upon the shepherd and his flock, 
the skylark or nightingale, or perhaps the hounds running, or the 
railway train. A real poet, according to Shakspeare, is like the 
lunatic and the lover, “of imagination all compact.” But it is 
possible to write pretty verses, as Mr. Skurray did, in this descriptive 
style, where no great amount of, imagination is required, because 
the scene before you presents abundance of realities. 
TrrRacEs.—I come now to speak of the terraces or steps that 
_ abound on the sides and slopes of the downs, not only in Wiltshire, 
but Dorsetshire, and other counties, where chalk hills occur. They 
are sometimes called lynchets, or lynches, from, I believe, the Anglo- 
Saxon “ land scéard,” i.e., land division. There is a good example 
at the foot of the down opposite to Heytesbury, called the Giant’s 
Steps; and another on the north side of Battlesbury, where they 
look, says Sir Richard C. Hoare, like a succession of broken ramparts. 
So much has been written controversially about these lynchets 
that it would take a very long time even to give an epitome of the 
different opinions that have been held, and of the arguments by 
which those opinions have been backed. I can only therefore very 
briefly allude to them. The real point is, are they artificial, made 
by man, or are they natural ? Of those who hold to: the artificial 
explanation, some think that they were made by the treading of 
cattle: that, as sheep make walks: along the hill-sides, so, heavier 
animals, by the beautiful regularity and gentleness of their foot- 
steps, have produced a series of paths: as level as a billiard table. 
This opinion may be dismissed as quite untenable. 
The next is that they were made for the purpose of vineyards. 
That the vine was cultivated in this country during the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries for the purpose of making wine there 
‘is now no dowbt. There was acontroversy many years ago upon 
‘the subject, in which one party maintained that the wine, or 
vinum, so often mentioned, was. not the juice of the grape, but of 
the apple, and that it was cider which was meant by the word wine. 
But the question has been set at rest by the discovery of records and. 
