36 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
always easy either to distinguish between the genuine 
enclosures of ancient days and the trenches left after 
the decay of comparatively modern fir-plantations, 
which it is usual to surround with a low mound and 
ditch. Long after the fir trees have died out the 
green mound remains ; but there are rules by which 
the two, with a little care, may be distinguished. 
The ancient field, in the first place, is generally 
very much smaller ; and there are usually three or 
four or more in close proximity, divided by the faint 
green ridges, sometimes roughly resembling in ground- 
plan the squares of a chess-board. The mound that 
once enclosed a fir-plantation is much higher, and 
would be noticed by the most casual observer. It 
encircles a wide area, often irregular in shape, oval or 
circular, and does not present the regular internal 
divisions of the other—which, indeed, would be un- 
necessary and out of place in a copse. 
It has become the fashion of recent years to break 
up the sward of the downs, to pare off the turf and 
burn it, and scatter the ashes over the soil newly 
turned up by the plough; the idea being mainly to 
keep more sheep by the aid of turnips and green 
crops than could be grazed upon the grass. In 
places it answers—in many others not ; after two or 
three crops the yield sometimes falls to next to no- 
thing. There is a ploughed field here right upon the 
ridge of the down, close to the ancient earthwork, 
where in dry summers I have seen ripening oats 
