28 THE DORSET DOWNS 



tions of Scots fir with bracken and foxgloves below, 

 sure signs of the absence of lime from the soil. The 

 farm we were in search of lay in one of the shallow 

 valleys where the chalk begins to rise above the 

 alluvial flats and the heaths bordering the coast ; at 

 its lower end a brave spring of clear chalk water came 

 to the surface and was bordered by water meadows 

 and wet pastures. Near the spring was placed the 

 homestead, as on most chalk farms at the lowest point 

 of the valley, because of the shelter and the nearness 

 of water even when no stream breaks out. From this 

 point the farm extended upwards in the usual long 

 strip, terminating in big upland grass fields rather than 

 in open down. The soil was the usual yellowish flinty 

 chalk loam, sometimes of considerably stiffer texture 

 on the higher ground, where no doubt Tertiary forma- 

 tions, now denuded away, had still left behind an 

 admixture of clay, just as on a more wholesale scale 

 they have left the deposit of Clay-with-Flints above the 

 chalk of the North Downs and Hertfordshire. The 

 thinnest soils lay on the side of the hill, where the 

 chalk turned up so loose and friable that it falls to 

 a powder on drying and will blow in the wind like the 

 lightest sand. Most chalk soils require a good deal 

 of consolidation in cultivation one old Kent custom 

 is to load a cart with bricks or stone and lead it up 

 and down between the rows of turnips but we never 

 saw a field on which the constant use of a heavy 

 roller was more necessary. 



Our host, however, was somewhat of an expert in 

 husbandry, one who belonged to the old school in the 

 thought and care he gave to the working of the land, 

 though he had broken away from the local custom of 

 comparatively fleet ploughing in favour of extra deep 

 cultivation. The scale of his holding, 1400 acres, of 



