70 THE PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



regretted that a too sanguine enterprise some years ago broke 

 up large portions of these downs. They can hardly pay for 

 cultivation at the present day, and in the case of many 

 thousands of acres broken up thirty or forty years ago, their 

 owners would gladly see them back again under the green- 

 swaid ; but this is by no means easy. The chalk does not 

 take kindly to grass, and it is a difficult task to get it back 

 again into the state of natural herbage in which it originally 

 was. It is too apt, after growing grass for the first two 

 or three years very satisfactorily, to become " benty," thin, 

 and poor, and to require to be broken up again, and put 

 through a course of husbandry. It will grow grass in alter- 

 nate husbandry, but it is difficult to restore the character of 

 herbage which originally existed. If space allowed, I could 

 cite cases in which this difficulty has been overcome. I have 

 seen instances in which as good herbage has been produced 

 as the original down. In such cases the problem has been 

 solved ; but in others the difficulties have proved insuper- 

 able. In describing the soils of the chalk, it is necessary to 

 divide them into the upper and the lower chalk. The upper 

 chalk, which forms the high-lying downs, abounds in layers 

 of flint stones. I have already spoken of the upper chalk 

 as giving a light soil grateful, easy-working, dry, wholesome, 

 well adapted for sheep and safe cropping all of which 

 characteristics were mentioned in connection with the York- 

 shire and Lincolnshire wolds. The lower chalk gives a 

 distinctly better soil. It is to be found stretching away from 

 the more westerly and northerly spurs of the downs, and 

 extends northwards and westwards from the main line of 

 chalk, and, as might be expected, being older, it crops up 

 northwards and westwards, and forms vales and valleys or 

 flat lands north and west of the chalk hills. It is destitute 

 of flints, much grayer in colour than the upper chalk, and 

 yields soils of much greater fertility. 



