INFLUENCE OF MAN. 609 



and Plantations are more beautiful than the comparatively mo- 

 notonous natural Forests of temperate regions. 



In the various settlements, in the growth of villages, and the 

 development of towns, we may trace the direct influence of the 

 geological structure and physical features, for upon these depend 

 the mining, manufacturing, and agricultural industries.^ 



In some districts, composed of soft and yielding sandstone strata, the original 

 trackways made by man have become cuttings 15 to 20 feet deep, known as 

 ' Hollow ways,' which are often overhung by trees and bushes. Although in many 

 instances roads have been deepened artificially to improve the gradient, yet in the 

 cases to which attention is now directed, the absence of tipped material on either 

 side of the lanes, and the fact that the crests of the hills have not been deepened, 

 prove that the excavations have not been made altogether artificially. In wet 

 weather these roads are the beds of temporary streams or torrents, and considerable 

 denudation must take place. Indeed, granted an original track-way, it seems 

 simply a matter of time, perhaps of centuries, to produce by natural agencies, 

 aided no doubt by traffic, the curious and picturesque lanes which abound in these 

 soft strata.- They occur in the Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire, in the New 

 Red rocks of Somerset and Devon, in the Oolite Sands near Yeovil, in the 

 Wealden strata of the south-eastern counties,^ in the Upper Greensand near 

 Devizes, and one marked instance may be seen in the Drift sands south of 

 Calthorpe church near Aylsham, in Norfolk. 



Agricultural operations have in some instances produced marked features in the 

 landscape. Remarkable ridges or terraces, known as linchets or lynches, are not 

 uncommon on the slopes of the Chalk, Oolitic, and Liassic escarpments, and on 

 the outlying portions of these formations. Some authors have attributed them to 

 marine action, but there is not the slightest evidence to support such a notion, 

 which is indeed refuted by the varying inclination and distribution of the ridges.* 

 They may occasionally be due to landslips, or to a natural accumulation of 

 rain-wash. It has, however, been pointed out that such ridges would be rapidly 

 formed when in early times (on the arable Common-field system) nothing was 

 more usual than for the owner or occupier to possess and cultivate several distinct 

 strips or breadths of land separated from one another by the lands of others. When a 

 hill-side formed part of the open field, the strips were almost always made to run 

 more or less horizontally along it. Each upper cultivator will naturally have taken 

 care not to allow the soil of his strip to descend to fertilize his neighbour's below, 

 and by forming boundary furrows with a slight ridge of soil between, he would 

 pave the way for a bank of earth which in the course of years increases into a 

 linchet several feet in height. In some cases on the steep Chalk downs, terraces 

 for ploughing appear to have been artificially cut.* 



Examples of these Linchets may be seen from the rail-road at Luton in Bedford- 

 shire, and between Cambridge and Hitchin, on the Chiltern Hills, Clothall in 

 Hertfordshire, Chesham in Buckinghamshire, on the South Downs, near Mere 

 in Wiltshire, at Crewkerne, Yeovil, Brent Knoll, and Glastonbury Tor in 

 Somersetshire.'' Many of them may be noticed on the hills east of Bridport. 

 Here in some places narrow strips of cultivated land, still enclosed by hedgerows, 

 fringe the higher slopes of the hills, ranging one above the other, and varying 



' See also Topley, on Parish Boundaries, etc., Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iii. 32. 

 "^ P. Geol. Assoc, ix. 208. 



^ Rev. Gilbert White, Nat. Hist, of Selborne, Letter v. 1789; Topley, Geol. 

 Weald, p. 380. 



* See D. Mackintosh, G. Mag. 1866, pp. 69, 155 ; and Scenery of England and 

 Wales, 1869, p. 84. 



* G. P. Scrope, G. Mag. 1866, p. 293, 1869, p. 535 ; F. Seebohm, The 

 English Village Community, 1883, p. 5. 



^ See Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 1, view of the Tor after 

 Hollar, about 1650, 



39 



