and there is a
general air of prosperity all round. Good elms grow and almost any
tree that is planted will succeed. Loams shade off on one side into
sand; the very fertile sands already described might quite truly be
called sandy loams. On the other side they shade off into clays; the
heavy loams used to be splendid wheat soils, but are now, like clays,
often of little value. But they form pleasant, undulating country,
nicely wooded, and dotted over with thatched cottages; the fields are
less wet and the roads are rather better than on the clays. When
properly managed they make excellent grass land.

Chalky soils stand out quite sharply from all others: their white
colour, their lime kilns now often disused, their noble beech trees,
and, above all, the great variety of flowering plants enable the
traveller at once to know that he is on the chalk. Many plants like
chalk and these may be found in abundance, but some, such as foxgloves,
heather, broom or rhododendrons cannot tolerate it at all, and so they
will not grow.

Chalk, like sand, is dry, and the roads can be traversed very soon
after rain. They are not very good, however; often they are only
mended with flints, which occur in the chalk and are therefore easily
obtainable, and the sharp fragments play sad havoc with bicycle tyres.
The bye roads and lanes are often narrow, winding, and worn deep
especially at the foot of the hills, so that the banks get a fair
amount of moisture and carry a dense vegetation. Among the profusion
of flowers you can find scabious, the bedstraws, vetches, ragwort,
{111} figwort, and many a plant rare in other places, like the wild
orchids; while the cornfields are often yellow with charlock. In the
hedgerows are hazels, guelder roses, maples, dogwood, all intwined with
long trails of bryony and traveller's joy. In the autumn the
traveller's joy produces the long, hairy tufts that have earned for it
the name of old man's beard, while the guelder roses bear clusters of
red berries. The great variety of flowers attracts a corresponding
variety of butterflies, moths and other insects; there are also numbers
of birds and rabbits--indeed a chalk country teems with life in spite
of the bare look of the Downs. The roads running at the foot of the
chalk Downs and connecting the villages, and farmhouses built there for
the good water supply, are particularly rich in plants because they
sometimes cut into the chalk and sometimes i