40 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



rarely worth cutting, and by July it has all vanished ; 

 and the sun-baked soil has by then an exceedingly 

 barren appearance, with its sprinkling of thistles, and 

 a few minute creeping herbs. This kind of land, 

 spoilt by the plough, is said by the shepherds to be 

 " sickly " ; and the grass that grows in it, little in 

 quantity and poor in quality, they call " gratton 

 grass." 



It has been said that if the turf is once destroyed by 

 ploughing on the downs it never grows again. This is 

 not absolutely true, as we may find in the old Roman 

 earthworks, of which there are so many on the high 

 downs, and which are now covered with as close and 

 rich a turf as may be seen anywhere. But this is 

 undoubtedly to go too far back. That Nature takes 

 an unconscionably long time to remake the turf charac- 

 teristic of the downs, when once it has been unmade by 

 the plough, there is a means of knowing. It happened 

 that in 1800, when wheat rose to the enormous price 

 of 160 shillings, and even more, per quarter, that on 

 the South Downs, as in many other places throughout 

 the country, a great deal of grazing land was brought 

 under cultivation. Much of this land, which was 

 cultivated for a year or two, has remained untilled 

 ever since ; and we see that like the " sickly " lands 

 that were tilled ten to twenty years ago it has not yet 

 got a turf. But in some respects it differs from the 

 sickl}- land ; for although unlike the turfy down- 

 land which exists side by side with it, it possesses a 



