CHAPTER I. 



AIR. 



[THIS Chapter contains a variety of matter not apposite to Wiltshire. Besides the passages here 

 quoted, there are accounts of several remarkable hurricanes, hail storms, &c., in different parts of 

 England, as well as in Italy. The damage done by " Oliver's wind" (the storm said to have occurred 

 on the death of the Protector Cromwell) is particularly noticed : though it may be desirable to state 

 on the authority of Mr. Carlyle, the eloquent editor of Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (8vo. 1846), 

 that the great tempest which Clarendon asserts to have raged " for some hours before and after the 

 Protector's death," really occurred four days previous to that event Aubrey no doubt readily 

 adopted the general belief upon the subject. He quotes, without expressly dissenting from it, the 

 opinion of Chief Justice Hale, that " whirlewinds and all winds of an extraordinary nature are 

 agitated by the spirits of air." Lunar rainbows, and meteors of various kinds, are described in this 

 chapter ; together with prognostics of the seasons from the habits of animals, and some observations 

 made with the barometer ; and under the head of Echoes, " for want of good ones in this county," 

 there is a long description by Sir Robert Moray of a remarkable natural echo at Roseneath, about 

 seventeen miles from Glasgow. On sounds and echoes there are some curious notes by Evelyn, but 

 these are irrelevant to the subject of the work. J. B.] 



BEFORE I enter upon the discourse of the AIR of this countie, it would not be amiss that I gave 

 an account of the winds that most commonly blow in the western parts of England. 



I shall first allege the testimony of Julius Csesar, who delivers to us thus : " Corus ventm, qui 

 magnam par tern omnis temporis in his locis flare consuevit." (Commentaries, lib. v.) To which I 

 will subjoine this of Mr. Th. Ax, of Somersetshire, who hath made dayly observations of the 

 weather for these twenty-five years past, since 1661, and finds that, one yeare with another, the 

 westerly winds, which doe come from the Atlantick sea, doe blowe ten moneths of the twelve. 

 Besides, he hath made observations for thirty years, that the mannours in the easterne parts of the 

 netherlands of Somersetshire doe yield six or eight per centum of their value ; whereas those in the 

 westerne parts doe yield but three, seldome four per centum, and in some mannours but two per 

 centum. Hence he argues that the winds carrying these unwholesome vapours of the low country 

 from one to the other, doe make the one more, the other less, healthy. 



This shire may be divided as it were into three stories or stages. Chippenham vale is the lowest 

 The first elevation, or next storie, is from the Deny Hill, or Bowdon Lodge, to the hill beyond the 

 Devises, called Red-hone, which is the limbe or beginning of Salisbury plaines. From the top of 



