290 LIFE AT DOWN. .^TAT. 33-45. 



which my father worked during the later years of his life, 

 were added at subsequent dates. 



Eighteen acres of land were sold with the house, of which 

 twelve acres on the south side of the house formed a pleasant 

 field, scattered with fair-sized oaks and ashes. From this 

 field a strip was cut off and converted into a kitchen garden, 

 in which the experimental plot of ground was situated, and 

 where the greenhouses were ultimately put up. 



The following letter to Mr. Fox (March 28th, 1843) gives 

 among other things my father's early impressions of Down : — 



" I will tell you all the trifling particulars about myself that 

 I can think of. We are now exceedingly busy with the first 

 brick laid down yesterday to an addition to our house ; with 

 this, with almost making a new kitchen garden and sundry 

 other projected schemes, my days are very full. I find all 

 this very bad for geology, but I am very slowly progressing 

 with a volume, or rather pamphlet, on the volcanic islands 

 which we visited : I manage only a couple of hours per day 

 and that not very regularly. It is uphill work writing books, 

 which cost money in publishing, and which are not read even 

 by geologists. I forget whether I ever described this place : 

 it is a good, very ugly house with 18 acres, situated on a chalk 

 flat, 560 feet above sea. There are peeps of far distant 

 country and the scenery is moderately pretty : its chief merit 

 is its extreme rurality. I think I was never in a more per- 

 fectly quiet country. Three miles south of us the great chalk 

 escarpment quite cuts us off from the low country of Kent, 

 and between us and the escarpment there is not a village or 

 gentleman's house, but only great woods and arable fields (the 

 latter in sadly preponderant numbers), so that we are abso- 

 lutely at the extreme verge of the world. The whole country 

 is intersected by foot-paths ; but the surface over the chalk is 

 clayey and sticky, which is the worst feature in our purchase. 

 The dingles and banks often remind me of Cambridgeshire 

 and walks with you to Cherry Hinton, and other places, 

 though the general aspect of the country is very different. I 

 was looking over my arranged cabinet (the only remnant I 



