that
scientists, as recently as the middle of the last century, were at
variance as to their natural or artificial origin.

A by-road, a little over five miles long, runs under the face of Nine
Barrows Down and Brenscombe Hill to Corfe. It is a picturesque route
and has some good views, but a much finer way, and but little longer,
is along the top of the Downs themselves culminating at Challow Hill
in a sudden sight of Corfe, backed by the imposing Knowle Hill. This
walk is even surpassed by that along the hills westwards from Corfe.
In this direction a similar by-road also runs under the long line of
the Purbeck Hills, here so called, but on the south side of the range
through Church Knowle which has an old cruciform church pulled about
by "restorers" as far back as the early eighteenth century and several
times since. The village is pleasant in itself and beautifully
situated. A short distance farther is an ancient manor house dating
from the fourteenth century. Its name--Barneston--is said to
perpetuate a Saxon landholder, Berne, so that the foundations of the
house are far older than this period. Over three miles from Corfe is
the small church hamlet of Steeple; here a road bears upward to the
right, and if the hill top has not been followed all the way from
Corfe it should certainly be gained at this point. Not far away and
nearer Church Knowle is Creech Barrow, a cone-shaped hill commanding a
most extensive and beautiful view, especially north-westwards over the
heathy flats of the Frome valley to the distant Dorset-Somerset
borderlands. The narrow Purbeck range now makes obliquely for the
coast, where it ends more than six miles from Corfe in the magnificent
bluff of Flowers' Barrow, or Ring's Hill, above Worbarrow Bay. This is
without doubt the finest portion of the Dorset coast, not only for the
striking outline of the cliffs and hills themselves but for the
beautiful colouring of the strata and the contrasting emerald of the
dells that break down to the purple-blue of the water. Neither drawing
nor photograph can give any idea of this exquisite blend of the stern
and the beautiful.

[Illustration: ARISH MEL.]

Eastwards, Gad Cliff guards the remote little village of Tyneham from
the sea; certain portions of this precipice seem in imminent danger of
falling into the water, so much do they overhang the beach. At
Kimmeridge Bay the cliff takes the sombre hue seen near Chapman's Pool
and the beach and water ar