Recent Wiltshire Boohs, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 639 



Bowerchalke, Chilmark, Orcheston St. Mary, Orcheston St. George, 

 White Sheet Hill. 



This list of illustrations shows what the scope of the book is ; for the 

 most part the downs south of the War Office area on the Plain, and 

 more especially the villages of the Wylye, the Nadder, and the Chalke 

 valleys. 



" The theme of the present work is the life, human or other, of the 

 South Wiltshire Downs, or of Salisbury Plain. It is the part of 

 Wiltshire Avhich has most attracted me. Most persons would say that 

 the Marlborough Downs are greater, more like the great Sussex range 

 as it appears from the Weald ; but chance brought me farther south, 

 and the character and life of the village people when I came to know 

 them made this appear the best place to be in." 



The author notes the great change in the nature of the turf on the 

 portions of the Plain in the occupation of the War Office. The sheep 

 formerly kept all plants dwarfed and close growing, and the turf conse- 

 quently fine and velvety. Now that the sheep are no more, the plants 

 are quickly acquiring a ranker habit, and the ,: down turf" has dis- 

 appeared. 



Of the old Wiltshire sheep he says : — " Once it was the only breed 

 known in Wilts, and extended over the entire county ; it was a big 

 animal, the largest of the fine-woolled sheep in England, but for looks 

 it certainly compared badly with modern downland breeds, and possessed, 

 it was said, all the points which the breeder or improver was against — 

 thus, its head was big and clumsy, with a round nose, its legs were long 

 and thick, its belly without wool, and both sexes were horned . . . 

 finally it was hard to fatten. On the other hand it was a sheep which 

 had been from of old on the bare open downs and was modified to meet 

 the conditions, the scanty feed, the bleak bare country, and the long 

 distances it had to travel to and from the pasture ground. It was a 

 strong, healthy, intelligent animal, in appearance and character like 

 the old original breed of sheep on the Pampas of South America . . . 

 A solitary flock of the pure-bred old Wiltshire sheep existed in the 

 county as late as 1840, but the breed has now entirely disappeared . . ." 

 The shepherd, " Caleb Bawcombe," the hero of the book, has his home 

 at " Winterbourne Bishop "—which from internal evidence seems to be 

 one of the villages in the neighbourhood of Cranborne Chase and near 

 the Dorset border, whilst '"Doveton " may perhaps be Stockton. There 

 are many stories of deer stealers in the old days in this neighbourhood, 

 as well as of the more ordinary kinds of poaching, and curious methods 

 of trapping foxes, rabbits, and hares, as practised by shepherds on the 

 downs, are described. Indeed, as is to be expected, the author gives 

 us many interesting natural history notes : on the abundance of 

 magpies in that part of the county ; the occurrence of a fieldfare's nest 

 in the days of the shepherd's boyhood ; the number of the ravens in 

 the earlier part of the nineteenth century in the Cranborne Chase 

 district, attracted by the dead horses on which the dogs of the Chase 

 were fed ; and the fact that ravens iregularly built in Great Ridge 

 Wood within living memory. He mentions the curious names " Over- 

 Tunner," as used for the Shrew mouse, and " Devils' Guts," for the 



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