294 The Vale of Warminster. 
and from one and the same cause. When they are found quite at the 
very foot of the hill, sweeping round it, and nearly on the very 
level of the vale, it becomes simply inconceivable why anybody 
should go to the trouble and expense of making them. 
I used a few years ago to have upon this subject friendly discussion 
with a neighbour, a very distinguished geologist, the late Mr. 
Poulett Scrope. He maintained that these terraces grew, that he 
had watched their growth, and others have told me the same thing. 
I will give you, as well as I can, his own explanation. 
There is, in this county, a great deal, and there used to be a great 
deal more, of what is called “common field,” 7.e., large tracts of 
unenclosed arable, held in “ severalty,” not unlike our modern Poor 
Allotments—strips or pieces, held, either by different persons, or, 
may be, three or four, by one and the same person. The strips are 
marked off from one another, not by hedge or wall, but by a simple 
grass path, a foot or so wide, which they call “ balks ” or “ meres.” 
Mr. Poulett Scrope used to take for his argument one of these 
“common fields.” It slopes gradually and gently: and is divided 
into breadths, crossing the slope horizontally—not down the hill. 
Supposing such a field to be divided into breadths for the first time, 
the measurer, in marking off your piece from mine, would turn up 
a double furrow, or leave a grass path, which you please. Mr. 
Scrope maintained that the loose and lighter soil in each breadth 
would be washed down, by degrees, towards the double furrow, or - 
grass walk, and there be stopped. This, going on year after year, 
would increase, till at last each grass path would be loaded with 
accumulated soil, enough to give it the appearance of a bank or 
terrace face, dividing each strip from the one below it. He had 
watched this, he said, on his own land ; and this he called the growth 
of terraces. 
It is, of course, quite intelligible, that banks should be formed in 
this way, in certain places, and under certain circumstances. But 
those cases would be comparatively few, viz., where the ground 
slopes very gradually, and where the strips are of considerable 
breadth. In other cases, where the hill falls precipitously, and the 
terraces are very narrow, and come close and quick one upon the 
