MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
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XII. 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
Hollow Ways. While engaged on the Geological Survey near 
Aylsham in 1879, 1 noticed, south of Calthorpe church, a short, 
but dcop and picturesque lane- cutting, which had been excavated 
through the glacial sand into the underlying brickearth. At the 
time the feature appeared to me a striking one, and recalled some 
of the deep and narrow lanes of Devonshire and West Somerset, 
which are often cut deeply into the red marls and sandstones, and 
where the foliage of the thick hedgerows and trees that border the 
way meet overhead, and form in places a leafy tunnel. Since then 
I have seen other even more striking “ hollow ways,” as they are 
sometimes called, near Yeovil and Bridport, on the borders of 
Somerset and Devon, where the lanes run deeply through the sands 
that underlie the Inferior Oolite. They occur also in the Wealden 
area of Kent, Surrey, and Hants, to the occurrence of which 
attention was drawn by Gilbert White in the fifth letter addressed 
by him to Thomas Pennant. He gives the explanation that may 
reasonably be accepted for the majority of these deep lanes, namely, 
that they have been worn down “ by the traffic of ages, and the 
fretting of water.” Thus the original track-ways, mere foot-paths 
and bridle-ways, became deepened on the slopes because the rains 
would fill them, and they would be temporary water-courses. In 
the course of centuries there would be formed, partly by the traffic, 
and more largely by the streams during heavy rainfall, these Hollow 
Ways. They differ from roads that have been excavated by 
artificial means to ease the gradient, because in the Hollow Ways 
the crests of the hills are not deepened. — dl. B. Woodward. 
Grey Seal ( llaliclHerus yryplius) at Wells. On the 28th of 
February, 1892, two of our fishermen leaving the harbour on the 
ebb tide, to look at their Welk traps, saw an object on the bar, 
which they at first thought to be the stranded carcase of a horse or 
some animal ; but on their return in the afternoon with the first of 
the flood, still seeing it there, they landed on the sandbank, and 
