"TRUTH AT THE BOTTOM OF A" MAKL-PIT. 75 



neighborhood of rivers and running streams. Put 

 yourself on the top of a Salisbury coach, some fine, 

 hot, midsummer's day, and take a trip across the 

 Marlborough downs, and then you will see what it 

 is to have a thirsty chalk subsoil upon high land, 

 " where no water is : " and then you will see reason 

 to conclude that there may be some problems even 

 more puzzling to deal with amid the infinite variety 

 of earth's surface, than a clay subsoil. 



As late as the middle of the Fifteenth Century, 

 we are told by an old writer* on husbandry mat- 

 ters, "Lime, even close to the kiln, was dearer 

 than Oats; "an odd comparison, yet forcible too; 

 and as roads were then not exactly w r hat they are 

 now, it is easy to see that our forefathers had reason 

 good for making the Marl-pit do duty for the Lime- 

 kiln.f The inorganic matter that was jogged away 

 from the Farm with every bushel of wheat or pound 

 of butter or cheese that went to market, did not 



* Whittaker, Hist, of Craven, p. 324. 



t It is somewhat remarkable that Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, 

 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (who tolls us ho was " an 

 experycnccd farmer of more than 40 yearcs ") in his " Boko of 

 Husbandrie," published in 1523, frequently mentions the em- 

 ployment of Marl, but in his list of Manures, etc., omits Lime 

 altogether. 



