By William Long, Esq. 141 



" Some encroachments have been made by the plough, within 

 these few years, upon Salisbury Plain. But these inroads, though 

 considerable in themselves, bear little proportion to the vastness of 

 these downy grounds. The plough is a heavy ,invader ; and its 

 perseverence only can produce a visible effect in so vast a scene. 



" Another reason also may operate powerfully in preserving these 

 wide domains in a state of nature. The soil is, in most places, very 

 shallow, not above five or six inches above a rock of chalk ; and as 

 the tillage of two or three years exhausts it, without more expense 

 than the land will answer, it hath been thought but ill husbandry 

 to destroy a good sheep walk for a bad piece of arable land.'^ 



Appearance op Stonehenge from the Plain. 

 Mr. Warner truly sa3's that " the distant effect of Stonehenge is 

 not so striking as the description of its magnitude would lead us to 

 imagine, since being an isolated object, situated iu the heart of the 

 plain, without anything around it for a standai'd of comparison, 

 every impression of its greatness is swallowed up and overwhelmed 

 in that idea of immensity which the prospect on every side presents 

 to the mind. This very circumstance of unaccompanied locality, 

 howevers heightens, perhaps, the effect of the fabric when we 

 approach it, for the mind, not being interrupted or distracted by 

 neighbouring objects, bends its undivided attention to the solitary 

 wonder before it.'' ^ And Mr. Fergusson justly observes of it that 

 " when viewed from a distance the vastness of the open tract in 

 which Stonehenge stands takes considerably from its impressiveness, 

 but when the observer gets close to its great monolithic masses the 

 solitary situation lends it a grandeur which scarce any other building 

 of its class can be said to possess.'' ^ 



Richard Hoare's Ancient Wilts, i., 94, is a very curious account of two bustards 

 having attacked men on horseback, near Tilshead, in June, 1801 In the 

 Times newspaper of March 2nd, 1876, was a letter from the Rev. F. 0. Morris, 

 the well-known ornithologist, in which he stated that he had heard recently 

 from a friend that a great bustard had taken up its quarters in the fens of 

 Cambridgeshire, and he claimed for it the protection given by the recent Act of 

 Parliament. It is vain to hope that the poor bird will be allowed to live at 

 peace in England. 



• Warner's " Excursions from Bath," 1801, p. 172. 

 ' Quarterly Review, No, 215, p. 202. 



