V 

 THE DORSET DOWNS 



As Devon and Cornwall are mainly given up to stock- 

 raising and dairying, we turned at Taunton and partly 

 retraced our steps in order to reach South Dorset. 

 Nor did the dairy country detain us the manufacture 

 of " blue vinny " must be left for another journey 

 but approaching Dorchester we reached again the 

 chalk and the region of extensive arable farms. In 

 this district the elevations are not so great nor the 

 gradients so severe as in Wiltshire ; the valleys, too, 

 are well watered, not only by the Frome and the 

 Piddle, but by tributary streams rising wherever the 

 surface level has been cut down to the water table in 

 the chalk rock. We turned our back on Maiden 

 Bower and the other tempting camps which crown the 

 heights above Dorchester, put aside the glamour of 

 Wessex and Thomas Hardy's country, and drove east- 

 ward to one of the largest sheep farmers thereabouts. 

 We were nearing the boundary of the chalk, for we 

 began to find the ridge by the roadside crowned by little 

 caps of Tertiary formations Woolwich Beds or Bagshot 

 Sand and the change in the flora was sudden and 

 complete. The chalk hedgerows, with their character- 

 istic shrubs the dogwood, the beam tree, the way- 

 faring tree, and, above all, the wreaths of clematis or 

 traveller's joy were suddenly exchanged for planta- 

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