VII 

 ANCIENT PONDS 



" To a thinking mind few phenomena are more strange than the state of little ponds on the 

 summits of chalk hills, many of which are never dry in the most trying droughts of summer." 



GILBERT WHITE. 



TT is high noon on the top of a Only the dew-pond on the height, 



chalk down, and we are watch- Unfed - that never fails - 



ing a flock of sheep slowly ascend the A single hot day, to say nothing of 



hill on which we sit. The members the needs of the flock, would be 



of the flock, consisting of about eight enough, one imagines, to dry up the 



or nine score, move, as one, towards pond. However, one may apply the 



some definite goal. famous logic of the impounded man in 



It soon becomes plain that the sheep answer to the argumentative lawyer, 



are heading for a circular depression " But I am in the stocks ! " The 



a little above us, on the very crest pond is not dry. 



of the down. We mount the few re- If we loiter long enough, mayhap 



maining feet, and find that the sheep some old shepherd will pass this way, 



have come to a dew-pond, or, to give and from him we may learn something 



it the alternative and better name, a of this ancient watering-place. Should 



mist-pond. They know the spot and he chance to be a young man, he 



have travelled hither nearly a mile to will stammer and hesitate, and will 



slake their thirst. require prompting before the name 



There is a little water in the pond, " dew-pond " or " mist-pond " is 



though the margin is sadly narrowed, remembered. That will be unfortu- 



At once it is borne in upon the mind nate, for you shall wander for hours 



that we have just passed through an over this inviolate waste and find none 



exceptionally dry season, yet here other to ask, unless a primitive Briton 



is a cavity, only ten or twelve yards emerges from the barrow hard by or 



in diameter, still containing a store of from the ancient cultivation terraces 



precious liquid. And this is on the on the next hill, 



down top. Rudyard Kipling sings We shall be told by the shepherd 



well on this subject : that when the vale below is parched 



