262 KALM'S ENGLAND. 



harder kind of chalk which is here called Hurlock,* and 

 has ordinarily the quality that it will with difficulty fall 

 to pieces for use on the fields. Sometimes, when there 

 is a great drought, it is said to fissure, ramna, very 

 much. Otherwise they call this soil loam, or loamy ground, 

 and it is just, as I may say, a medium between chalk 

 and a stiff clay. It is a species of chalk, kritaktigart, 

 in a certain way ; but the chalk is so hard that it cannot 

 easily be loosened or turned to any use on the fields. I 

 speak of the soil which is dug up in the chalk-banks, or 

 slopes, Kritbackarna, for that which is found in the 

 ploughed fields was, through the folks industry and 

 manuring, more loose, yet it seems almost to have the 

 qualities of a potclay, spiklera, namely, to hold moisture. 

 On the north side of the great hills [that is the range of 

 Ivinghoe Beacon, Steps Hill, and Clipper Down] the 

 ploughed fields were still, at midday, quite [T. I. p. 261] 

 wet, which came from the sharp frost there was the night 

 before, whose remaining moisture the sun had not yet 

 been able to dry up. But when we went home in the 

 evening the mould on the ploughed fields was quite dry. 

 On the wet roads where the soil was much trodden it 

 everywhere looked like a lime-mortar which is used for 

 walling. The wheels of the carts with which they drove 

 on the roads were so coloured by it as if they had driven 

 them into a heap of mortar. It was a special feature 

 that there were no flints on the ploughed fields, unless it 

 were some single bit, of which it is quite uncertain how 

 it had come there ; while, on the other hand, the fields 

 around Little Gaddesden and in all Chilturn Land were 

 quite full of them ; but, instead of these, there here lie 

 pieces of this hard chalk. In the same way, in all the 



* Burlock, the name for the Lower Chalk, near Tring and Dunstable, 

 1886. [J. L.] 



