294 Sc7-ope— The Terraces of the Chalk Downs, 



their being sea- worn cliifs, or raised beaches, dating from a time, 

 therefore, when the vales and hills of England lay below the ocean^ 

 was put forward as a certain fact by Mr. D. Mackintosh. But since 

 I am not aware that the precise mode of formation of these terraces 

 (locally called Linchets or Balks) has been anywhere clearly ex- 

 plained, it may be worth while to take this opportunity for doing so. 



Any one who lives in a neighbourhood where these banks occur 

 may see them, if not in course of formation from their beginning, yet 

 growing yearly before his eyes ; that is to say, wherever the slope 

 above the bank is under arable cultivation. In this case as the 

 course of the plough almost always follows the more or less hori- 

 zontal trend of the surface, which is always the direction of the 

 banks, the ridge of soil raised by the mould-board of the plough has 

 everywhere a tendency, through the action of g-ravity upon it, to 

 fall down-hill, never upwards. This down -hill tendency of the dis- 

 turbed soil is greatly assisted by the wash of heavy rains upon the 

 sloping surface, and the result is that, year by year, the whole sur- 

 face soil of the slope, when under continuous arable culture, is, 

 slowly, indeed, but surely, travelling downwards, until it is stopped by 

 some hedge, or wall, or bank, which limits in a downward direction 

 the disturbing action of the plough. Hence it is that wherever a hedge 

 or wall forms the lower limit of any arable surface, with a considerable 

 inclination, an accumulation of mould or made earth will be found, 

 often several feet in depth, and by that much elevated above the surface 

 of the soil on the lower side of the fence. In the meantime the upper 

 parts of the slope, losing their vegetable mould, get poorer and poorer, 

 the plough works nearer the bone (as farmers say), and the soil is there 

 only recruited by contributions levied from the subsoil or triturated 

 rock beneath. The thrifty farmers of Devonshu'e therefore often em- 

 ploy their idle hands and teams in winter in digging out the soil that 

 has descended to the bottom of their steep fields and carting it up to 

 the top again — ^thus restoring the balance and maintaining the fertility 

 of the upper portion. 



But, it may be said, the ordinary linchets of the chalk-downs 

 have no hedge or wall along their lower boundary, which might 

 act as a material obstacle to the descent of the soil before it 

 reaches the very bottom of the combe or vale. True ; but though 

 it might be said in reply that fences may formerly have existed 

 there, it is in no degree necessary to suppose this in order to 

 account for the origin of the banks. We know that in early times 

 the arable lands of the greater part of England were held as in 

 severalty by different tenants or owners. We know, too, that, on the 

 arable Common-field system, nothing was more usual than for the 

 same owner or occupier to possess and cultivate several distinct strips 

 or breadths of land separated from one another by the lands of others. 

 Let us assume that a hill-side in one of these terraced districts was 

 held in three or four strips of land, lying one above the other, by dis- 

 tinct occupiers — the strips being, for the sake of convenience in plough- 

 mg, longitudinal in form, that is, having their greatest length in a hori- 

 zontal or nearly horizontal direction, follo'ndng the sweep of the hill- 



