of the Chalk Downs. 



187 



the lower side of the fence. In the meantime the upper parts of 

 the slope losing their vegetable mould get poorer and poorer; the 

 plough works nearer the bone (as the farmers say) and the soil is 

 then only recruited by contributions drawn from the subsoil or tri- 

 turated rock beneath. The thrifty farmers of Devonshire there- 

 fore often employ their idle hands and teams in winter in digging 

 out the soil which has descended to the bottom of their steep fields, 

 and carting it up to the top again ; thus restoring the balance, and 

 maintaining the fertility of the upper portion. 



But it may be said the ordinary lynchets of the chalk downs 

 have no hedge or wall along their lower boundary which might 

 act as a material obstacle to the descent of the soil before it reaches 

 the very bottom of the comb or vale. True ; but it may be said 

 in reply that fences possibly existed there in early times. It is, 

 however, in no degree necessary to suppose this in order to account 

 for the origin of the banks, which in fact where a fence does exist 

 will rarely be found in actual contact with it, but stopping short 

 by a yard or two above it, at the point where the action of the 

 plough ceases. 



We know that in early times the arable lands of the greater 

 part of England were held in severalty by different tenants or 

 owners ; and also that on the common field system nothing was 

 more usual than for the same owner or occupier to cultivate several 

 distinct strips or breadths of land separated from each other by 

 the lands of others. Let us assume that a hill side was held in 

 three or four strips of land lying one above the other by distinct 

 occupiers : the strips having, for the sake of convenience in plough- 

 ing, their greatest length in a horizontal or nearly horizontal 

 direction, following the sweep of the hill side, whether curved or 

 straight. The boundary line between two of these neighbouring 

 strips may have been originally only a mathematical one, connecting 

 say, two mere-stones, and yet a bank will soon have been formed 

 along it, for each upper cultivator will naturally take care not to 

 allow the soil of his strip to descend to fertilize that of his neigh- 

 bour below. He would draw the lower limit of his strip by a 

 reversed furrow, throwing the last ridge of soil up hill ; thus leaving 



