Scrope— The Terraces of the Chalk Downs. 295 



side wliether curved or straight. The boundary line between these 

 several strips may have been originally only a mathematical one, 

 connecting, say, two mere-stones, and yet a bank will soon have 

 been formed along it. For each upper cultivator will naturally have 

 taken care not to allow the soil of his strip to descend to fertilize his 

 neighbour's below. He would draw the lower limit of his strip by 

 a reversed furrow, throwing the last ridge of soil up-hill, and thus 

 leaving a slight trench, sufficient, however, to stop the silt washed 

 down from above, which consequently would accumulate there in a 

 bed perhaps an inch or two only in depth. But the next year, or on 

 the next ploughing, the process is repeated. The cultivator again 

 purposely checks the descent of silt by a double boundary furrow ; 

 and by degrees a slight bank of earth is formed, which, in the pro- 

 gress of years, increases into a linchet or balk several feet in height, 

 with a somewhat flattened terrace above. This is not mere theory. 

 I have often watched the growth of such banks, and even witnessed 

 their formation from the beginning. It is notable, indeed, with what 

 rapidity they are produced. For instance, I own a steeply sloping 

 field, which was formerly rough grass-land, having a hedge at its 

 base with the usual bank of earth on the upper side raised some five 

 feet above the level of the surface on the lower side. Along that 

 upper side of the hedge runs a public footpath. I gave leave to my 

 tenant to plough up the grass slope, which he has now done for 

 about ten years past, and the result has been the formation of a new 

 bank, or linchet, as it may be called, from two to three feet high, 

 above the footpath which has remained unchanged at its original 

 level. See the illustration below, where the dotted line represents 

 a section of the surface before the plough had broken it up, the 

 firm line, that of its present form ; a h is, the newly formed terrace. 



h h the new balk or linchet, c d the older one, c h the footpath, c e 

 the hedge. The bank and terrace a b h are of course composed of 

 soil washed down from the upper slope in the manner above de- 

 scribed in the course of ten years ploughing, and the undisturbed 

 position of the footpath shows that the fence has had no influence in 

 producing the bank, which can only have been formed by the 

 gradual accumulation of the soil washed down from above in the 

 lowest furrow turned by the plough above the path. The slight 

 ridge of grass that would naturally gi'ow up on the outward edge of 

 this fuiTow would alone suffice to check the descent of the silt into 

 the path, and cause it to settle above. 



This, I have no hesitation in asserting, is the simple explanation 



