Farming of Dorsetshire. 
399 
mouth it passes the coral-rag, and successively cuts the forest- 
marble, corn-brash, Oxford clay, coral-ra<;, Kimmeridge clay, 
and the Purbeck stone, in its passage to Black Down, where it 
reaches the great chalk district. At Batcombe it runs across the 
Oxford clay of the Blackinoor vale, and, passing through the 
forest-marble, corn-brash, and fuller's earth, ends in the lime- 
stone of the inferior oolite at Patson Hill on the borders of 
Somersetshire. 
Agricultural Divisions. — The county of Dorset has been hap- 
pily divided into Felix, Petraea, and Deserta ; the first indicating 
its fruitful vales ; the second, its oolites and other rocks ; the 
last, its barren and forsaken heaths. If under the second term 
we arrange the chalk formation, we have as clear a general 
description of the county as we can well obtain ; and, with a few 
slight reservations, these three terins are convertible into the 
three great classes of soils before referred to — the clays, the 
chalks, and the sands. We must, however, except from the 
category of " happy " vales the Marshwood country, the clays of 
Kimmeridge, Broadway, Abbotsbury, and Burton Bradstock; and 
in their stead rank, in the first division, the rich genial loams 
that are to be found in the Bridport and Beaminster districts. 
Upon the bleak chalk hills and barren downs the traveller will 
smile at the extravagant eulogiums which the old topographical 
writers bestowed upon the county. In at least four works it is 
styled "the Garden of England;" and Mr. Bowen, who pub- 
lished in 1747 " A complete System of Geography," declares 
that it is, " both for rider and for abider, one of the pleasantest 
counties in England." But in the west of Dorset this character 
will appear not undeserved ; and it is probable that Charles II. 
took a western aspect of the county when he declared, " on 
returning from Plymouth, that he had never seen a finer country, 
in England or out of it." The vale of Blackmoor, too, is a 
" happy " vale — pre-eminently so ; for there Nature has been 
most bountiful, and her operations have been least interfered 
with. 
First in importance, both for extent and the character of its 
farming, stands the Chalk district. Dr. Maton, writing of it 
many years ago, remarked, " We trod the rich soil of the vale 
of Blackmoor until we came to Revel's Hill : before we searched 
into the nature of the soil we were sufficiently instincted that it 
had passed into the chalk by the altered aspect of vegetation — 
the most pleasing intermixture of wood and pasture was ex- 
changed for open downs and unvaried barrenness." The modern 
traveller would assign a similar reason for the " instinct," but in 
a different sense. He would be inclined to agree with Dr. Buck- 
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