By the Rev. Canon Jackson, F.S.4. 299 
of the best all down the length of the loin, leaving the sides and 
the bone to anybody. But he cut his loin of mutton across, so that 
each person should have a fair help—a bit of best lean, a bit of fat, 
and bit of bone. How do we know this? Why, look how the 
parishes lie in the Vale of Warminster. Not long-wise down the 
vale, but across it. I do not know it well enough to say whether 
all do, but I am sure a great many do, not only in this, but in other 
vales in Wiltshire ; that of Pewsey, certainly. There they run across 
in comparatively narrow strips up on to the downs at each side, 
so that the cultivator of each farm has his water-meadow, his pasture, 
his arable, his wood, his water, and his down—his fat, his lean, his 
skin, his bone, share and share alike. 
All South Wilts, geologically described, is one large expanse of 
chalk surface, with long narrow vales at considerable intervals. In 
the vales, and nowhere else, are the rivers. Consequently as soon 
as the wild old people who lived on the downs by hunting, and 
scorned the drudgery of digging, had disappeared, their more sensible 
successors settled near the water in the valleys. They cultivated 
the slopes of the downs, and left the downs themselves for sheep and 
cows. The chief landowner then having severed a certain quantity 
of acres for his own demesne, let all the rest, I believe, originally in 
small holdings, each man having his few acres of pasture inclosed 
and certain acres of arable in the common field. This common field 
system existed all over England; but it gave way by degrees to 
inclosure. I observed, however, by a Return to Parliament last 
year, that there is still more common field left in the county of Wilts 
than in any other: the quantity being about 23,000 acres, or 5000 
more than in any other. 
There is a curious circumstance connected with ponds on the chalk 
downs, not generally known. Whether it is or is not the case in 
South Wilts I cannot say, but in North Wilts, as at Tan Hill and 
on Hackpen, ponds for sheep, when made upon the highest part of 
the chalk downs, are found to keep up the supply of water better 
than those made in the lower grounds. Gilbert White (Hist. of 
_ Selborne) mentions them on the Sussex downs, by the name of 
~ “Dew Ponds.” 
