nto the neighbouring clay,
sand or rock. Now and then a spring bursts out and a little stream
takes its rise: if you follow it you will generally find watercress
cultivated somewhere.

Besides the beech trees you also find ash, sycamore, maples, and, in
the church yards, some venerable yews. Usually the chalk districts
were inhabited very early: they are dry and healthy, the land can be
cultivated and the heights command extensive views over the country, so
that approaching enemies could easily be seen. On the chalk downs and
plains are found many remains of tribes that lived there in the remote
ages of the past, whose very names are now lost. Strange weapons and
ornaments are sometimes dug up in the camps where they lived and
worked; the barrows can be seen in which they were buried, and the
temples in which they worshipped; Stonehenge itself, the best known of
all these, lies on the chalk. {112} Several of the camps still keep
the name the ancient Britons gave them--the _Mai-dun_, the encampment
on the hill, changed in the course of years to Maiden, as in Maiden
Hill, near Dorchester, in Dorset, Maiden Bower, near Dunstable, and so
on. Some of their roads are still in use to this day, the Icknield Way
(the way of the Iceni, a Belgic tribe), the Pilgrim's Way of the
southern counties and others.

Even the present villages go back to very ancient times, and the
churches are often seven or eight hundred years old.

In places the land is too steep or too elevated to be cultivated, and
so it is left as pasture for the sheep or "sheep walk"; where
cultivation is possible the fields are large and without hedges, like
those shown in Fig. 51; during autumn, winter and spring there are many
sheep about, penned or "folded" on the arable land, eating the crops of
swedes, turnips, rape, vetches or mustard grown for them, or grazing on
the aftermath of sainfoin or grass and clover. So important are sheep
in chalk districts that the whole scheme of farming is often based on
their requirements, but corn is also a valuable crop, and, especially
in dry districts, barley, so that chalk soils are often spoken of as
"sheep and barley" soils. Although the pastures are very healthy there
is not generally much food or "keep" for the animals during the summer
because of the dryness.

[Illustration: Fig. 51. Open chalk cultivated country, Isle of Thanet]

The black soil of the fen districts and elsewhere is widely different
from