By the Rev. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 297 
his senses could ever have been at the trouble and expense of making, 
because there was no reason for making them. The explanation there 
ee ee 
is just the same as here. Some harder layer has resisted the action 
of the sea that was over it. 
Of parallel roads, 7.e., roads corresponding to one another on 
opposite sides of valleys, there are some very extraordinary instances 
in Scotland and elsewhere. The exact process of their formation 
has of course been a subject of much discussion among geologists. 
But they are, generally speaking, on a very large scale, to which 
our Wiltshire banks and terraces are comparatively trifling. 
I pass now from the sides of your downs, to their summit, where 
we find mysterious landmarks crossing and intersecting the surface 
of the downs in such a way as to denote occupation at some former 
time. 
British Serrtements.—Nothing can be more delightful than the 
air upon the downs of Wiltshire. Equestrians seek it for a gallop, 
pedestrians can walk there twice as long as they can in the low 
country or in the woods. Invalids take up their quarters (where 
they can find any) upon Salisbury: Plain, and in a few weeks, or 
even days, they are new persons. 
But that is quite a different thing from living continually and 
without interruption up in those airy regions all the year round. 
It is difficult to believe that this was ever done; but upon the 
surface of the downs there are, in many places, lines and banks, and 
marks of land-division ; also hollows, or pits, sometimes in many 
hundreds close together, as at the place called Pen-pits, beyond 
Stourhead. That, by the way, is a very remarkable place, and well 
worth going to look at, by those who take the least interest in these 
_ things. All these pits, hollows, lines and banks, are considered to 
be traces of the habitations of some very ancient occupiers of this 
country. We have, in reality, no account of these early folk, and 
_ therefore, after all, it is only by examining and digging that we can 
conjecture what these pits and boundary marks have been. 
_ Sir R. C. Hoare, who studied these matters for many years, at- 
tributes these irregular surfaces to those ancient people, especially 
where the grass is greener and the soil turned up by the moles is of 
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