LITTLE GADDESDEN. 34 1 



quality throughout. Sometimes flints were found of all 

 kinds of curious shapes, which resembled goats' -horns, 

 spigots, etc. In some pieces appeared traces of bivalve- 

 shells, musselskal, especially of the kind called 

 Pectinites. 



When a flint has lain a long time in the sun it ac- 

 quires a white colour on the surface like a burnt flint, 

 Kisel-sten, and in some places among the white it has 

 a bluish colour. In chalk-pits there are often seen strata 

 of an entirely different colour, viz., of tegel-fargade 

 jorden eller svartmyllan ofverst, the brick-coloured 

 earth or soil on the top, which is a sign that these dis- 

 tricts in former times stood under water ; for in deep 

 chalk-pits, Krit-gropar, there sometimes occur two or 

 more strata of such brick-coloured earth with several ells 

 pure chalk above and between them.* 



The 15th April, 1748. 



In the morning we set out on the journey back from 

 Little Gaddesden to Woodford, in Essex. 



The whole of the time we stayed at Little Gaddesden 

 we got to learn a great deal more of English rural 

 economy from the farmers than from Mr. Ellis, who was 

 very jaloux and ' close ' about the little he knew of the 

 subject. When we first came to Little Gaddesden he 

 had his four-wheel-drill-plough which stood out on the 

 farm ; but directly afterwards it was locked up, so that I 

 did not get to see it any more than when Mr. Ellis, with 

 two carls, devoted a whole afternoon to sowing out with 

 it about a pint of seed. When we took our leave, he 

 gave me a leaf written full of various of his so-called 



* These latter earth beds are ' pipes ' in the chalk. The explanation of 

 the flints on the surface, and their absence in the pits is that the latter are dug 

 in the middle chalk which has very few flints, and that the hills are capped 

 by upper chalk which has many. \J. L.] 



