10 AUBREY'S NATURAL HISTORY OF WILTSHIRE. 



they are on Durnham-downe, about Bristow, which was assuredly the work of an earthquake, when 

 these great cracks and rallies were made. 



The like dispersion of great stones is upon the hills by Chedar rocks, as all about Charter House, 

 [Somersetshire,] and the like at the forest at Fountain-Bleau, in France ; and so in severall parts of 

 England, and yet visible the remarques of earthquakes and volcanoes ; but in time the husbandmen 

 will cleare their ground of them, as at Durnham-downe they are exceedingly diminished since my 

 remembrance, by making lime of them. 



The great inequality of the surface of the earth was rendred so by earthquakes : which when 

 taking fire, they ran in traines severall miles according to their cavernes ; so for instance at Yatton 

 Keynell, Wilts, a crack beginnes which runnes to Longdeanes, in the parish, and so to Slaughtonford, 

 where are high steep cliffs of freestone, and opposite to it at Colern the like cliffs ; thence to Bathe, 

 where on the south side appeare Claverdon, on the north, Lansdon cliffs, both downes of the 

 same piece ; and it may be at the same time the crack was thus made at St. Vincent's rocks near 

 Bristow, as likewise Chedar rocks, like a street. From Castle Combe runnes a valley or crack to 

 Ford, where it shootes into that that runnes from Yatton to Bathe. 



Edmund Waller, Esq., the poet, made a quaere, I remember, at the Royal Society, about 1666, 

 whether Salisbury plaines were always plaines ? 



In Jamaica, and in other plantations of America, e. g. in Virginia, the natives did burn down great 

 woods, to cultivate the soil with maiz and potato-rootes, which plaines were there made by firing the 

 woods to sowe corne. They doe call these plaines Savannas. Who knowes but Salisbury plaines, 

 &c. might be made long time ago, after this manner, and for the same reason ? 



I have oftentimes wished for a mappe of England coloured according to the colours of the earth ; 

 with markes of the fossiles and minerals. [Geological maps, indicating, by different colours, the for- 

 mations of various localities, are now familiar to the scientific student. The idea of such a map 

 seems to have been first suggested by Dr. Martin Lister, in a paper on " New Maps of Countries, 

 with Tables of Sands, Clays," &c. printed in the Philosophical Transactions, in 1683. The Board of 

 Agriculture published a few maps in 1794, containing delineations of soils, &c. ; and in 1815 Mr. 

 William Smith produced the first map of the strata of England and Wales. Since then G. B. 

 Greenough, Esq. has published a similar map, but greatly improved ; and numerous others, repre- 

 senting different countries and districts, have subsequently appeared. J. B.] 



The great snailes* on the downes at Albery in Surrey (twice as big as ours) were brought from 

 Italy by Earle Marshal about 1638. 



OF THE INDOLES OF THE IRISH. Mr. J. Stevens went from Trinity College in Oxford, 1647-8, 

 to instruct the Lord Buckhurst in grammar ; afterwards he was schoolmaster of the Free Schoole 

 at Camberwell ; thence he went to be master of Merchant Taylors' Schoole ; next he was master of 

 the schoole at Charter House ; thence he went to the Free Schoole at Lever Poole, from whence he 

 was invited to be a schoole master of the great schoole at Dublin, in Ireland ; when he left that he 

 was schoolmaster of Blandford, in Dorset ; next of Shaftesbury ; from whence he was invited by the 

 city of Bristoll to be master of the Free Schoole there ; from thence he went to be master of the 

 Free Schoole of Dorchester in Dorset, and thence he removed to be Rector of Wyley in Wilts, 1666. 



* Bavoli, (i. e.) drivelers. J. EVELYN. 



