104 The soil cmd the countryside 



are called light soils — and can be dug at any time ; 

 seeds can be sown early, and early crops can be got. 

 Consequently these soils are very useful for men doing 

 special work like fattening winter and spring sheep, or 

 producing special crops like fruit or potatoes, and for 

 market gardeners who grow all sorts of vegetables, 

 carrots, parsnips, potatoes, peas, and so on. Fig. 47 

 is a view of a highly cultivated sandy region in Kent 

 showing gooseberries in the foreground, vegetables be- 

 hind, and a hop garden behind that again. 



The uncultivated sands are sometimes not really so 

 very different, and some of them, perhaps many of them, 

 might be improved or reclaimed and made to grow these 

 special crops if it were worth while. But they always 

 require special treatment and therefore they have been 

 left alone. In days of old our ancestors disliked them 

 very much ; " villanous, rascally heaths " Cobbett always 

 called them. There were practically no villages and few 

 cottages, because the land was too barren to produce 

 enough food ; the few dwellers on the heath, or the 

 "heathen," were so ignorant and benighted that the name 

 came to stand generally for all such people and has re- 

 mained in our language long after its original meaning 

 was lost. As there were so few inhabitants the heaths 

 used to be great places for robbers, highwayn»en, and evil- 

 doers generally ; Gad's Hill on the Watling St. between 

 Rochester and Gravesend, Finchley Common, Hounslow 

 Heath and others equally dreaded by travellers of the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were barren sandy 

 tracts. But in our time we no longer need to dread 

 them ; we can enjoy the infinite charm of the breezy, 

 open country with its brown vegetation, the pink blossom 

 of the bell-shaped heath and the lilac blossom of the 



