NAMES AND ASSOCIATIONS 253 



high ground at Combe Hill or Inkpen Beacon, 

 show that there must naturally always have existed 

 over this area open or clear spaces, where the chalk 

 lies close to the surface, and no trees can grow. 

 The area of the Tertiary clays and loams which 

 exist north of the chalk area, and, like it, extend 

 from the south-east to the north-west, was that 

 which was formerly covered by the great forest of 

 North Hampshire.' The remains of wild animals 

 that have been found in the Clere country are those 

 of the red deer, the ox known as the Celtic short- 

 horn (Bos longifrons), the wolf, the wild cat, and the 

 beaver. Painstaking Mr. Shore has found Elfinland 

 in the Clere country. Those ' pretty children of our 

 childhood' — which 'belong, as the mites upon the 

 plum, to the bloom of fancy, a thing generally too 

 frail and beautiful to withstand the rude handling of 

 Time' 1 — the Elfins have left their traces on the 

 Cleres. ' The fairy rings which occur in places on 

 the lower slopes of the chalk downs preserve for 

 us some references to the fairies of tradition. 

 Another more important reference occurs in the 

 Clere place-names in which the syllabic word " sid" 

 occurs. " Sid " was the fairy-mound of the Celtic 

 age, and we have still remaining in the Clere 

 country Sid-on-Hill, Sid-monton, and Sid-ley wood, 

 south of Ashmansworth, a surviving group of fairy- 

 mound names such as occurs nowhere else in 

 Hampshire.' The antiquarian interested in the 

 Roman in Britain is informed that amongst the 



1 Thomas Hood. 



