LONDON AND SUBURBS. 2"] 



wall, nothing at all is heard, hores alsintet, although 

 the other person whispered as loud as before. 



[T. I. p. 379.] The 30th April, 1748. 



Mull-vallar omkring angar, koks-krydd- 

 gardar, etc. Earth-walls around meadows, market 

 gardens, &c. 



A number of small enclosed meadows, pastures, and 

 market-gardens, lie on all sides round and close in to 

 London, and part of them also in the suburbs. Instead 

 of fences, plank-fences, walls or other kind of hedge 

 around all these, high and thick earth-walls were cast up. 

 These earth-walls consist of the same soil, jordmon, 

 as is found on the meadows, &c, viz., of a brick- 

 coloured clay, tegel-fargad lera, with much gravel and 

 Pebble-stones amongst it. In one place and another in the 

 suburbs they had cast up walls around the market- 

 gardens, for the most part merely of the dirt which had 

 been shovelled together on the roads close by. The 

 height of these earth-walls was various, mostly 6 feet, 

 sometimes, though seldom, as much as 8 feet, yet often 

 only 4 feet or 3 feet, but few below that. There was 

 commonly a ditch on the outer side of them. The wall 

 was broader at the bottom, but afterwards narrowed 

 more and more up to the top where it was sometimes 

 scarcely 6 inches broad. The breadth or thickness down 

 at the ground, 8, 6, 5, or 4 feet, according to the height 

 of the wall. When such a wall became old, it fell down 

 in some places, for which reason it should be very often 

 repaired. The height and inclination of the wall, 

 together with the ditch outside it, prevented any cattle 

 from getting over it as long as it was whole. By this 

 means wood was spared, and no more time or trouble 

 was required for repairing these earth-walls than with us 



