AN EARLY HARVEST 159 



seemed little promise of roots or catch crops. At the 

 end of July, indeed, with harvest beginning, one hardly 

 saw what was recognizable as a field of roots on 

 Salisbury Plain ; as a rule the great bare stretches 

 showed only here and there a green tinge to indicate 

 something coming up, and only occasionally had it 

 been possible to hoe and set out the roots to the eye 

 in defined lines. Harvest was in full swing on 22nd 

 July, even a field of barley was being cut, and the heat 

 was such that in a tropical country it would have been 

 thought dangerous to work in the sun in the middle of 

 the day. We wondered what the occasional flocks of 

 Cheviots and Blackfaces which we saw, recent introduc- 

 tions into the down country and apparently growing in 

 favour even in this classic home of the Hampshires, 

 were making of the novel torrid conditions. 



Our first object was the Vale of Pewsey, the broad 

 valley which traverses the central mass of chalk from 

 east to west and separates the Marlborough Downs 

 from Salisbury Plain proper. As the natural gateway 

 to the west it is traversed by the great high road 

 through Devizes ; and though at first the two railroads 

 turned the chalk by way of Swindon and Salisbury 

 respectively, the Great Western now drives straight 

 through the Vale of Pewsey to Westbury. In the 

 west the floor of the valley has been cut down through 

 the chalk to the Upper Greensand and the Gault, so 

 that on the lower levels the soil is of a distinctively 

 heavy type, at that time cracked wide with the 

 drought ; very generally again the soil shows that 

 black or leaden colour so characteristic of the Upper 

 Greensand all over its outcrop. The Vale farms, like 

 most of those in Wiltshire, run large, 800 acres 

 being no uncommon figure, while small holdings have 

 no place in the farming of the district. Again, as is 



