incident of ancient history. There are no traces remaining of any covered way or hollow dyke leading down the slope in the direction of the spring; but some such traces do seem to exhibit themselves in two places—at the rear of the earthwork along the ridge of the hill, and down the steepest and shortest ascent. The first does not come up to the entrenchment, being separated by a wide interval; the latter does, and may possibly have been used as a covered way, though now much obliterated and too shallow for the purpose. The rampart itself is in almost perfect preservation; in one spot the soil has slightly slipped, but form and outline are everywhere distinct.

In endeavouring, however, for a moment to glance back into the unwritten past, and to reconstruct the conditions of some fourteen or fifteen centuries since, it must not be forgotten that the downs may then have presented a different appearance. There is a tradition lingering still that they were in the olden times almost covered with wood. I have tried to fix this tradition—to focus it and give it definite shape; but like a mist visible from a distance yet unseen when you are actually in it, it refuses to be grasped. Still, there it is. The old people say that the king—they have no idea which king—could follow the chase for some forty miles across these hills, through a succession of copses, woods, and straggling covers, forming a great forest. To look now from the top of the rampart over the rolling hills, the idea is difficult to admit at first. They are apparently bare, huge billowy swells of green, with wide hollows, cultivated on the lower levels, but open and unenclosed for mile after mile, almost without hedges, and seemingly treeless save for the gnarled and stunted hawthorns—apparently a bare expanse; but more minute acquaintance leads to different conclusions.

Here, to begin with, on the same ridge as the earthwork and not a quarter of a mile distant, is a small clump of wind-harassed trees, growing on the very edge. They are firs and beech, and, though so thoroughly exposed to furious gales, have attained a fair height even in that thin soil. Beech and fir, then, can grow here. Away yonder on another ridge is another such a clump, indistinct from the distance; though there is a pleasant breeze blowing and their boughs must sway to it, they appear motionless. With the exception of the poplar, whose tall top as it slowly bends to the blast describes such an arc as to make its motion visible afar, the most violent wind fails to enable the eye to separate the lines of light coming so nearly parallel from the branches of an elm or an oak, even at a comparatively short distance. The tree looks perfectly still, though you know it must be vibrating to the trunk and loosening the earth with the wrench at its anchoring roots.

In more than one of the deep coombes there is a row of elms—out of sight from this post of vantage—whose tops are about level with the plain, where you may stand on the edge and throw a stone into the rook’s nest facing you. On a lower spur, which juts out into the valley, is a broad ash wood. Little more than a mile from hence, on the most barren and wildest part of the down, there yet linger some stunted oaks interspersed among the ash copses which to this day are called ‘the Chace’ and are proved by documentary evidence to stand on the site of an ancient deer forest. A deer forest, too, there is (though seven or eight miles distant, yet on the same range of hills) to this very day tenanted by the antlered stag. Such evidence could be multiplied; but this is enough to establish the fact that for the whole breadth of the hills to have been covered with wood is well within possibility.

I may even go further, and say that, if left to itself, it would in a few generations revert to that condition; for this reason: that when a clump of trees is planted here, experience has shown that it is not so much the wind or the soil which hinders their growth as the attacks of animals wild and tame. Rabbits in cold, frosty weather have a remarkable taste for the bark of the young ash-saplings: they nibble it off as clean as if stripped with a knife, of course frequently killing the plant. Cattle—of which a few wander on the hills—are equally destructive to the young green shoots or ‘tops’ of many trees. Young horses especially will bark almost any smooth-barked tree, not to eat, but as if to relieve their teeth by tearing it off. In the meadows all the young oaks that spring up from dropped acorns out in the grass are invariably torn up by cattle and the still closer-cropping sheep. If the sheep and cattle were removed, and the plough stood still for a century, ash and beech and oak and hawthorn would reassert themselves, and these wide, open downs become again a vast forest, as doubtless they were when the beaver and the marten, the wild boar and the wolf, roamed over the country.

This great earthwork, crowning a ridge from whence a view for many miles could have been obtained over the tops of the primeval trees, must then have had a strangely different strategical position to what it now seemingly occupies in the midst of almost treeless hills. Possibly, too, the powerful effect of so many square miles of vegetation in condensing vapour may have had a distinct influence upon the rainfall, and have rendered water more plentiful than now: a consideration which may help to explain the manner in which these ancient forts were held.

The general deficiency of moisture characteristic of these chalk hills is such that it is said agriculture flourishes best upon them in what is called a ‘dropping’ summer, when there is a shower every two or three days, the soil absorbing it so quickly. For the grass and hay crops down below in the vale, and for the arable fields there with a stiff heavy soil, on the other hand, a certain amount of dry weather is desirable, else the plough cannot work in its seasons nor the crops ripen or the harvest be garnered in. So that the old saying was that in a drought the vale had to feed the hill, and in a wet year the hill had to feed the vale: which remains true to a considerable extent, so far at least as the cattle are concerned, and was probably true of men and their food also before the importation of corn in such immense quantities placed both alike free from anxiety on that account. This deficiency of moisture being borne in mind, it is a little curious to find ponds of water on the very summit of the down.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile from the earthwork, and on a level with it—close to the clump of firs and beech alluded to previously—there may be seen on this warm summer day a broad, circular, pan-like depression partially filled with water. Being on the very top of the ridge, and only so far sunk as to hold a sufficient quantity, there is little or no watershed to drain into the pond; neither is there a spring or any other apparent source of supply. It would naturally be imagined that in this exposed position, even if filled to the brim by heavy storms of rain, a week of sultry sunshine would evaporate it to the last drop; instead of which, excepting, of course, unusually protracted spells of dry weather such as only come at lengthy intervals, there will always be found some water here; even under the blazing sunshine a shallow pool remains, and in ordinary times the circular basin is half full.

It is of quite modern construction, and, except indirectly, has no bearing upon the water-supply of the earthwork, having been made within a few years only for the convenience of the stock kept upon the hill farms. Some special care is taken in puddling the bottom and sides to prevent leakage, and a layer of soot is usually employed to repel boring grubs or worms which would otherwise make their holes through and let the water soak into the thirsty chalk beneath. In wet weather the pond quickly fills; once full, it is