444 KALM S ENGLAND. 



5. In the chalk pits the chalk is found not to lie quite 

 dense [T. II. p. 96] and solid, but is full of both horizon- 

 tal and perpendicular fissures. 



6. If one goes early in the morning into a chalk pit 

 before the sun has dried up the dew, or also on to a field 

 where pieces of chalk are lying, one will find that the 

 chalk is slippery, and almost wetter than any other kind 

 of earth. 



From all these observations it seems to follow that 

 the rain and the snow which falls cannot stand in the 

 surface soil because it is too loose ; but it goes down into 

 the chalk ; that the chalk has a property of absorbing 

 moisture ; that the water filters deeper down, through 

 the many perpendicular and horizontal fissures in the 

 chalk : that very few becks could, on that account, be 

 found on the chalk hills, because they, as it were, swallow 

 up all the water before it has time to collect so as to form 

 a beck ; that crops and pease which grow on the chalk 

 hills, for that reason, do not require to be drained, 

 because the chalk, which lies below, probably absorbs the 

 dew in the night, and in the day is dissolved by the water 

 which lies down in the fissures. 



From this want of springs and flowing waters it 

 happens that the cattle, at times in the summer when it 

 is a long and severe drought, come to suffer much. They 

 must often then be driven some miles before they can be 

 watered. I was informed that in some places they had 

 no other water to use for cooking than such as was 

 collected in the chalk pits, which is white and thick, and 

 often so full of small insects that they are obliged both to 

 filter and boil it [T. II. p. 97] first, before they dare use it. 



Sain Foin. I have said above that most of the inci- 

 sures which here in Kent are used as meadows, were 

 sown with Sain Foin. I saw to-day places were Sain 

 Foin had been cut, harvested, and carried home this year, 



