324 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



appearance of a vast green serpent with its mile-long 

 coil lying in a series of curves across the earth. As 

 in the case of the old Roman green roads, the turf 

 of the earthwork is a different and brighter shade 

 of green than that of the valley. 



At this place I once met and had a long talk 

 about the far past with a man of a singularly lively 

 mind for a Wiltshire peasant. He told me that 

 on numberless occasions since his boyhood he had 

 stood looking at this great earthwork in wonder, 

 asking himself who and what the people were that 

 made it. " I have often," he said, " had the idea 

 that they must have been mad; for allowing that 

 they had a use for such a wall and ditch why did 

 they make it go winding all over the place instead 

 of carrying it in a straight line and saving more than 

 half the labour it cost to build it? " I could only 

 suggest in reply that it was no doubt a very ancient 

 earthwork, dating back to the time when metal tools 

 were unknown in England and that the chalk had 

 to be scooped up with sharp flints; that when they 

 came to a very hard bit they had to make a bend 

 to get round it. I also assured him that they could 

 not have been mad as no such disease was known 

 to the old ancient people. 



Now in spring the flat top of this earthwork in 

 all that space where it lies across the level valley, 

 the broad level top of the bank is grown over with 

 the bird's-foot trefoil, the yellow flowers as crowded 

 as the daisies on the old Roman road, with not one 

 flower to be seen growing on the green sloping 



