The Natural History of Wiltshire

by John Aubrey

CHAPTER II SPRINGS MEDICINALL.

[IN Aubrey's time the mineral waters of Bath, Tonbridge, and other places, were very extensively resorted to for medical purposes, and great importance was attached to them in a sanatory point of view. The extracts which have been selected from this chapter sufficiently shew the limited extent of the author's chemical knowledge, in the analysis of waters; which he appears to have seldom carried beyond precipitation or evaporation. He mentions several other springs in Wiltshire and elsewhere, attributing various healing properties to some of them; but of others merely observing, with great simplicity, whether or not their water was adapted to wash linen, boil pease, or affect the fermentation of beer. The chapter comprises a few remarks on droughts; and particularly mentions a remarkable cure of cancer by an "emplaster" or "cataplasme" of a kind of unctuous earth found in Bradon forest.- J. B.]

HOLY-WELL, in the parish of Chippenham, near Sheldon, by precipitation of one-third of a pint with a strong lixivium, by the space of twenty- four houres I found a sediment of the quantity of neer a small hazell nut-shell of a kind of nitre; sc. a kind of flower of that colour (or lime stone inclining to yellow); the particles as big as grosse sand. Upon evaporation of the sayd water, which was a pottle or better, I found two sorts of sediment, perhaps by reason of the oblique hanging of the kettle: viz. one sort of a deep soot colour; the other of the colour of cullom earth. It changed not colour by infusion of powder of galles. Try it with syrup of violettes.

Hancock's well at Luckington is so extremely cold that in summer one cannot long endure one's hand in it. It does much good to the eies. It cures the itch, &c. By precipitation it yields a white sediment, inclining to yellow; sc. a kind of fine flower. I believe it is much impregnated with nitre. In the lane that leads from hence to Sapperton the earth is very nitrous, which proceeds from the rich deep blew marle, which I discovered in the lane which leads to Sapworth.

Biddle-well lies between Kington St. Michael and Swinley; it turnes milke. In the well of the mannour house (Mr. Thorn. Stokes) of Kington St. Michael is found talc, as also at the well at Priory St. Maries, in this parish; and I thinke common enough in these parts.

In Kington St. Michael parish is a well called Mayden-well, which I find mentioned in the Legeir-booke of the Lord Abbot of Glaston, called Secretum Domini [or Secretum Abbatis.] Let it be tryed. Alice Grig knows where about it is.

In the park at Kington St. Michael is a well called Marian's-well, mentioned in the same Legeir-book.

In the parish of North Wraxhall, at the upper end of ye orchard of Duncomb-mill at ye foot of ye hill ye water petrifies in some degree; which is the onely petrifying water that I know in this countie. [In subsequent pages Aubrey refers to other petrifying waters near Calne, Devizes, and elsewhere.-J. B.]

At Draycott Cerne (the seate of my ever honoured friend Sir James Long, Baronet, whom I name for honour's sake) the waters of the wells are vitriolate, and with powder of galles doe turne of a purple colour.-[I have a delicate, cleare, and plentifull spring at Upper Deptford, never dry, and very neer the river Ravens-born; the water famous for ye eyes, and many other medicinal purposes. Sr Rich. Browne, my father-in-lawe, immur'd it, wth a chaine and iron dish for travellers to drink, and has sett up an inscription in white marble.- JOHN EVELYN.] ___________________________________

Stock-well, at Rowd, is in the highway, which is between two gravelly cliffs, which in warm weather are candied. It changed not colour with powder of galles; perhaps it may have the effect of Epsham water. The sediment by precipitation is a perfect white flower, Mice nitre. The inhabitants told me that it is good for the eies, and that it washes very well. It is used for the making of medicines. ___________________________________

At Polshutt rises a spring in a ditch neer Sommerham-bridge, at Seenes townes-end, in a ground of Sir Walter Long, Baronet, which with galles does presently become a deepe claret colour. ___________________________________

At Polshutt are brackish wells; but especiall that of Rich. Bolwell, two quarts whereof did yield by evaporation two good spoonfulls heapt of a very tart salt. Dr. Meret believes it to be vitriolish.

Neer to which is Send (vulgo Seene), a very well built village on a sandy hill, from whence it has its name; sand being in the old English called send (for so I find writ in the records of the Tower); as also Send, in Surrey, is called for the same reason. Underneath this sand (not very deep), in some place of the highway not above a yard or yard and a half, I discovered the richest iron oare that ever I sawe or heard of. Come there on a certain occasion,* it rained at twelve or one of the clock very impetuously, so that it had washed away the sand from the oare; and walking out to see the country, about 3 p.m., the sun shining bright reflected itself from the oare to my eies. Being surprised at so many spangles, I took up the stones with a great deale of admiration. I went to the smyth, Geo. Newton, an ingeniose man, who from a blacksmith turned clock maker and fiddle maker, and he assured me that he has melted of this oare in his forge, which the oare of the forest of Deane, &c. will not doe.

* At the Revell there, An°. D. 1666.

The reader is to be advertised that the forest of Milsham did extende itselfe to the foot of this hill. It was full of goodly oakes, and so neer together that they say a squirrill might have leaped from tree to tree. It was disafforested about 1635, and the oakes were sold for 1s. or 2s. per boord at the most; and then nobody ever tooke notice of this iron-oare, which, as I sayd before, every sun-shine day, after a rousing shower, glistered in their eies. Now there is scarce an oake left in the whole parish, and oakes are very rare all hereabout, so that this rich mine cannot be melted and turned to profit. Finding this plenty of rich iron-oare, I was confident that I should find in the village some spring or springs impregnated with its vertue; so I sent my servant to the Devizes for some galles to try it; and first began at Mr. J. Sumner's, where I lay, with the water of the draught- well in the court within his house, which by infusion of a little of the powder of the galles became immediately as black as inke; that one may write letters visible with it; sc. as with inke diluted with water, which the water of Tunbridge will not doe, nor any other iron water that ever I met with or heard of. I tryed it by evaporation and it did yield an umberlike sediment: I have forgot the proportion. I gave it to the Royall Society.

In June 1667,1 sent for three bottles of this well water to London, and experimented it before the Royall Society at Gresham Colledge, at which, time there was a frequent assembly, and many of the Physitians of the Colledge of London. Now, whereas the water of Tunbridge, and others of that kind, being carried but few miles loose their spirits, and doe not alter their colour at all with powder of galles, these bottles, being brought by the carrier eighty odd miles, and in so hot weather, did turn, upon the infusion of the powder, as deep as the deepest claret; to the admiration of the physitians then present, who unanimously declared that this water might doe much good: and Dr. Piers sayd that in some cases such waters were good to begin with, and to end with the Bath; and in some "è contra". This place is but 9 or 10 miles from Bath.

The Drs. then spake to me, to write to some physitians at Bath, and to recommend it to them, whom I knew; which I did. But my endeavours were without effect till August 1684. But they doe so much good that they now speake aloud their own prayses. They were satisfied (I understood at last) of ye goodnesse and usefulnesse of these waters, but they did not desire to have patients to be drawn from ye Bath. Now, whereas one person is grieved with aches, or bruises, or dead palseys, for which diseases the Bath is chiefly proper, ten or more are ill of chronicall diseases and obstructions, for the curing whereof these chalybiate waters are the most soveraigne remedie.

This advertisement I desired Dr. Rich. Blackburne to word. He is one of the College of Physitians, and practiseth yearly at Tunbridge- wells. It was printed in an Almanack of Hen. Coley about 1681, but it tooke no effect.

"Advertisement.- At Seen (neer ye Devizes in Wiltshire) are springs discovered to be of the nature and vertue of those at Tunbridge, and altogether as good. They are approved of by severall of ye physitians of the Colledge in London, and have donne great cures, viz. particularly in the spleen, the reines, and bladder, affected with heat, stone, or gravell; or restoring hectick persons to health and strength, and wonderfully conducing in all cases of obstructions."

I proceeded and tryed other wells, but my ingeniose faithfull servant Robert Wiseman (Prudhome) tryed all the wells in the village, and found that all the wells of the south side doe turne with galles more or lesse, but the wells of the north side turne not with them at all. This hill lies eastward and westward; quod N.B.

The water of Jo. Sumner's well was so bad for household use that they could not brew nor boyle with it, and used it only to wash the house, &c.; so that they were necessitated to sinke a well in the common, which is walled, about a bow shott or more from his dwelling house, where is fresh and wholsome water. Memorandum. Dr. Grew in his [Catalogue] of the Royall Society has mistaken this well in the common for the medicinall well of J. Sumner. But, mem., there is another well that turnes, I thinke, as deep as J. Sumner's. [On the subject of this discovery by Aubrey, to which he attached great importance, the reader is referred to Britton's "Memoir of Aubrey", published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society, p. 17. As there stated, most of the property about Seend now belongs to W. H. Ludlow Bruges, Esq. M.P., who preserves the well; but its waters are not resorted to for sanatory purposes. - J. B.] ___________________________________

Memorandum. That Dudley, Lord North, grandfather to Sir Francis North, Lord Keeper, and Baron of Guildford, returning from his travells from the Spaw, &c. making a visit to the Earle of Leicester at Penshurst, his relation, as he was riding thereabout made observation of the earth where the water run, the colour whereof gave him an indication of its vertue. He sent for galles, and tryed it by evaporation, &c. and found out the vertue, which hath ever since continued and donne much good to the drinkers, and the inhabitants thereabout* This discovery was this year (1685), about seventy-five years since, and 'tis pitty it should be buried in oblivion. My Lord Keeper North told me of this himselfe.

*At Tunbridge and Epsom Wells, where were only wild commons, now are abundance of well-built houses. [The changes and improvements at Tunbridge Wells have been very great since Aubrey wrote. In 1832 I wrote and published an octavo volume- " Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells and the Calverley Estate", with maps and prints. Since that time the railroad has been opened to that place, which will increase its popularity. Epsom Wells are now deserted. At Melksham, in the vicinity of Seend, a pump-room, baths, and lodging-houses were erected about twenty-five years ago; but fashion has not favoured the place with her sanction. See Beauties of Wiltshire, vol. iii.- J. B.]

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When the springs doe breake in Morecombe-bottom, in the north side of the parish of Broad Chalke, which is seldome, 'tis observed that it foretells a deer yeare for corne. It hath discontinued these forty yeares. ___________________________________

At Crudwell, neer to the mannour house, is a fine spring in the street called Bery-well. Labourers say it quenches thirst better than the other waters; as to my tast, it seemed to have aliquantulum aciditatis; and perhaps is vitriolate. The towne, a mannour of the Lord Lucas, hath its denomination from this well; perhaps it is called Crudwell from its turning of milke into cruds.

At Wotton Basset, in the parke, is a petrifying water, which petrifies very quickly.

At Huntsmill, in this parish, is a well where the water turnes leaves, &c. of a red colour. ___________________________________

Below the Devises, the water in all the ditches, at the fall of the leafe, lookes blewish, which I could not but take notice of when I was a schoole boy. ___________________________________

In the parish of Lydyard-Tregoz is a well called by the country people Antedocks-well (perhaps here was the cell of some anchorete or hermite); the water whereof they say was famous heretofore in the old time for working miracles and curing many diseases. ___________________________________

As I rode from Bristoll to Welles downe Dundery-hill, in the moneth of June, 1663, walking down the hill on foot, presently after a fine shower I sawe a little thinne mist arise out of the ditch on the right hand by the highwayes side. But when I came neer to the place I could not discern it: so I went back a convenient distance and saw it again; and then tooke notice of some flower or weed that grew in the ditch whence the vapour came. I came againe to the marke, and could see nothing of a mist, as before; but my nose was affected with a smell which I knew; but immediately it came not to my mind; which was the smell of the canales that come from the bathes at Bath. By this time my groom was come to me, who, though of a dull understanding, his senses were very quick; I asked him if he smelt nothing, and after a sniff or two, he answered me, he smelt the smell of the Bath. This place is about two parts of three of the descent of Dundery-hill, ___________________________________

I doe believe the water of the fountaine that serves Lacock abbey is impregnated with {symbol for mars}[iron]. That at Crokerton, near Warminster, I thinke not at all inferior to those of Colbec in France. The best felt hatts are made at both places. ___________________________________

At or near Lavington is a good salt spring. (From ye Earl of
Abingdon.)

The North Wilts horses, and other stranger horses, when they come to drinke of the water of Chalke-river, they will sniff and snort, it is so cold and tort I suppose being so much impregnated with {alchemical sign for nitre} [nitre]. ___________________________________

Advise my countrymen to try the rest of the waters as the Sieur Du Clos, Physitian to his most Christian Majestie, has donne, and hath directed in his booke called " Observations of the Minerall Waters of France made in ye Academy of Sciences."- I did it transient, and full of businesse, and "aliud agens tanquam canis e Nilo". ___________________________________

The freestone fountaine above Lacock, neer Bowdon, in the rode-way, is higher than the toppe of Lacock steeple. Sir J. Talbot might have for a small matter the highest and noblest Jeddeau [jet-d'eau] in England. ___________________________________

It is at the foot of St. Anne's-hill, or else Martinsoll-hill, {that} three springs have their source and origen; viz. the south Avon, which runnes to Sarum, and disembogues at Christes Church in Hants; the river Kynet, which runnes to Morlebrugh, Hungerford, and disembogues into the Thames about Reading; and on the foote of the north side arises another that runnes to Calne, which disembogues into the north Avon about Titherton, and runnes to Bristowe into the Severne. [See also Chap. III. Rivers.-J. B.] ___________________________________

In the parish of……. is a spring dedicated to St. Winifred, formerly of great account for its soveraigne vertues. What they were I cannot learne; neither can I thinke the spring to be of less vertue now than in the time of Harry the Eight; in which age I am informed it was of great esteeme: and I am apt to conjecture that the reason why the spring grew out of fame was because S*. Winifred grew out of favour. ___________________________________

At the Devizes, on the north side of the castle, there is a rivulet of water which doth petrifie leafes, sticks, plants, and other things that grow by it; which doth seem to prove that stones grow not by apposition only, as the Aristotelians assert, but by susception also; for if the stick did not suscept some vertue by which it is transmuted we may admire what doth become of the matter of the stick ___________________________________

At Knahill [Knoyle] is a minerall water, which Dr. Toop and Dr. Chamberlayn have tryed. It is neer Mr. Willoughby's house: it workes very kindly, and without any gripeing; it hath been used ever since about 1672. ___________________________________

Dr. Guydot sayes the white sediment in the water of North Wiltshire is powder of freestone; and he also tells me that there is a medicinall well in the street at Box, near Bathe, which hath been used ever since about 1670. ___________________________________

Mr. Nich. Mercator told me that water may be found by a divining rod made of willowe; whiche he hath read somewhere; he thinks in Vitruvius. Quaere Sir John Hoskins de hoc. ___________________________________

In Poulshott parish the spring was first taken notice of about thirty yeares since by S. Pierse, M.D. of Bathe, and some few made use of it Some of the Devises, who dranke thereof, told me that it does good for the spleen, &c., and that a hectick and emaciated person, by drinking this water, did in the space of three weekes encrease in flesh, and gott a quick appetite.

Memorandum. In this village are severall springs, which tast brackish; which I had not the leisure to try, but onely by præcipitation, and they yield a great quantity of the white flower-like sediment. ___________________________________

Bitteston.- At the George Inne, the beere that is brewed of the well there is diuretique. I knew some that were troubled with the stone and gravell goe often thither for that reason. The woman of the house was very much troubled with fitts of the mother; and having lived here but a quarter of a yeare, found herself much mended; as also her mother, troubled with the same disease. I observed in the bottome of the well deep blew marle.

[The hysterical paroxysms to which females are peculiarly subject were in Aubrey's time commonly termed "the mother", or "fits of the mother". Dr. Edward Jorden published a "Discourse on the Suffocation of the Mother", (4to.) in 1603.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Alderton. - Mr. Gore's well is a hard water, which, when one washes one's hands will make them dry, as if it were allume water. I tryed it by præcipitation, and the sediment was the colour of barme, white and yellow, and fell in a kind of flakes, as snow sometimes will fall, whereas all the other sediments were like fine flower or powder. ___________________________________

In Minety Common in Bradon forest, neer the rode which leadeth to Ashton Caynes, is a boggy place called the Gogges, where is a spring, or springs, rising up out of fuller's earth. This puddle in hot and dry weather is candid like a hoar frost; which to the tast seemes nitrous. I have seen this salt incrustation, even 14th September, four foot round the edges. With half a pound of this earth I made a lixivium. Near half a pint did yield upon evaporation a quarter of an ounce wanting two graines. Of the remainder of the lixivium, which was more than a pint, I evaporated almost all to crystallize in a cellar. The liquor turned very red, and the crystalls being putt on a red hott iron flew away immediately, like saltpetre, leaving behind a very little quantity of something that look'd like burnt allum. Now it is certain that salts doe many times mixe; and Mr. Robert Boyle tells me hee believes it is sea-salt mix't with {nitre}, and there is a way to separate them. After a shower this spring will smoake. The mudd or earth cleanses and scowres incomparably. A pike of eighteen foot long will not reach to the bottome.

My Lady Cocks of Dumbleton told me that ladies did send ten miles and more for water from a spring on Malverne hill in Worcestershire to wash their faces and make 'em faire. I believe it was such a nitrous spring as this. ___________________________________

The fuller's earth which they use at Wilton is brought from Woburne in Bedfordshire; and sold for ten groates a bushell. ___________________________________

The Baths may have its tinging vertue from the antimonie in Mendip. Quaere Mr. Kenrick, that when he changed a sixpence holding it in his hand it turned yellow, and a woman refused it for bad silver. I thinke he had been making crocus of antimonie. The chymists doe call antimony Proteus, from its various colouring. ___________________________________

Mr. T. Hanson, of Magd. Coll. Oxon, acquaints me in a letter of May 18, 1691, that he observes that almost all the well-waters about the north part of Wiltshire were very brackish. At High-worth, Mr. Alhnon, apothecary, told him he had often seen a quantity of milke coagulated with it: and yet the common people brew with it, which gives their beer an ungratefull tast. At Cricklad their water is so very salt that the whole town are obliged to have recourse to a river hard by for their necessary uses. At Wootton Basset, at some small distance from the town, they have a medicinall spring, which a neighbouring divine told him Dr. Willis had given his judgment of, viz. that it was the same with that of Astrop. They have also a petrifying spring. At the Devizes, about a quarter of a mile from the towne, a petrifying spring shewn me by Dr. Merriweather, a physitian there. At Bagshot, near Hungerford, is a chalybiate, dranke by some gentlemen with good successe. ___________________________________

Mdm. In my journey to Oxford, comeing through Bagley-wood, on St. Mark's day, 1695,1 discovered two chalybiate springs there, in the highway; which On May the 10th I tryed with powder of galles, and they give as black a tincture as ever I saw such waters: one may write with it as legibly as with black lead.

At the gate at Wotton Common, near Cumnor in Berkshire, is a spring which I have great reason to believe is such another: and also at the foot of Shotover-hill, near the upping-stock, I am confident by the clay, is such another spring. Deo gratias. ___________________________________

Quæres for the Tryall of Minerall Waters; by the Honourable Sir
William Petty, Kt.:-

1. How much heavier 'tis than brandy ? 2. How much common water will extinguish its tast ? 3. What quantity of salt upon its evaporation ? 4. How much sugar, allum, vitriol, nitre, will dissolve in a pint of it ? 5. Whether any animalcule will breed in it, and in how long time ? 6. Whether fish, viz. trout, eeles, &c. will live in it, and how long? 7. Whether 'twill hinder or promote the curdling of milk, and fermentation ? 8. Whether soape will mingle with it ? 9. Whether 'twill extract the dissolvable parts of herbes, rootes, seedes, &c. more or less than other waters; (i. e.) whether it be a more powerful menstruum ? 10. How galles will change its colour ? 11. How 'twill change the colour of syrup of violets ? 12. How it differs from other waters in receiving colours, cochineel, saffron, violets &c.? 13. How it boyles dry pease? 14. How it colours fresh beefe, or other flesh in boyling ? 15. How it washes hands, beards, linnen, SEC. ? 16. How it extracts mault in brewing ? 17. How it quenches thirst, with meat or otherwise ?

8. Whether it purges; in what quantity, time, and with what symptomes? 19. Whether it promotes urine, sweat, or sleep ? 20. In what time it passeth, and how afterwards ? 21. Whether it sharpens or flattens the appetite to meate ? 22. Whether it vomits, causes coughs, &c. ? 23. Whether it swell the belly, legges; and how, in what time, and quantity &c. ? 24. How it affects sucking children, and (if tryed) foetus in the wombe ? 25. Whether it damps or excites venerie ? 26. How blood lett whilest the waters are dranke lookes, and how it changes ? 27. In what degrees it purges, in different degrees of evaporation, and brewed ? 28. Whether it breakes away by eructation and downwards ? 29. Whether it kills the asparagus in the urine? 30. What quantity may be taken of it in prime ? 31. Whether a sprig of mint or willow growes equally as out of other waters? 32. In what time they putrify and stink ?

CHAPTER III. RIVERS.

[THE following extracts include the whole of this chapter, with the exception of a few extraneous passages.-J. B.]

I SHALL begin with the river of Wyley-bourn, which gives name to Wilton, the shire town. The mappe-makers write it Wyley fulvous, and joiner a British and a Saxon word together: but that is a received error. I doe believe that the ancient and true name was Twy, as the river Twy in Herefordshire, which signifies vagary: and so this river Wye, which is fed with the Deverill springs, in its mandrels winding, watering the meadows, gives the name to the village called Wyley, as also Wilton (Wyley-ton); where, meeting with the upper Avon and the river Adder, it runnes to Downtown and Fording bridge, visiting the New Forest, and disembogues into the sea at Christ Church in Hampshire. On Monday morning, the 20th of September, [1669] was begun a well intended designe for cutting the river [Avon] below Salisbury to make it navigable to carry boats of burthen to and from Christ Church. This work was principally encouraged by the Right Reverend Father in God, Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, his Lordship digging the first spit of earth, and driving the first wheeled barrow. Col. John Wyndham was also a generous benefactor and encourager of this undertaking. He gave to this designe an hundred pounds. He tells me that the Bishop of Salisbury gave, he thinks, an hundred and fifty pounds: he is sure a hundred was the least. The engineer was one Mr. Far trey, but it seems not his craft's-master; for through want of skill all this charge and paines came to nothing: but An° Done 16. . .it was more auspiciously undertaken and perfected; and now boats passe between Salisbury and Christ Church, and carry wood and corne from the New Forest, the cartage whereof was very dearer; but as yet they want a haven at Christ Church, which will require time and charge.

[Of the numerous rivers in Wiltshire only a few are navigable, and those only for a short distance in the county. This is the consequence of its inland position and comparative elevation; whence it results that the principal streams have little more than their sources within its limits. The project of rendering the Avon navigable from Salisbury to Christ Church appears to have been first promulgated by John Taylor, the Water Poet, who, in 1625, made an excursion in his own sherry, with five companions, from London to Christ Church, and thence up the Avon to Salisbury. He published an account of his voyage, under the title of " A Discovery by sea, from London to Salisbury." Francis Mathew also suggested the improvement of the navigation of the river in 1655; and an Act of Parliament for that purpose was obtained in 1664. Bishop Ward was translated to the see of Salisbury in 1667, but the commencement of the works, as described by Aubrey, was probably delayed till 1669, in August of which year the Mayor of Salisbury and others were constituted a Committee "to consult and treat with such persons as will undertake to render the Avon navigable." Two other pamphlets urging the importance of the project were published in 1672 and 1675 (see Gough's Topography, vol. ii. p. 366); and in 1687 a series of regulations was compiled "for the good and orderly government and usage of the New Haven and Pier now made near Christchurch, and of the passages made navigable from thence to the city of New Sarum." (See Hatcher's History of Salisbury, pp. 460, 497.) The works thus made were afterwards destroyed by a flood, and remained in ruins till 1771. Some repairs were then executed, but they were inefficient; and the navigation is now given up, except at the mouth of the river; and even there the bar of Christchurch is an insurmountable obstacle except at spring tides.-(Penny Cyclopædia, art. Wiltshire.) As the Bishop dug the first spitt, or spadeful of earth, and drove the first wheelbarrow, that necessary process was no doubt made a matter of much ceremony. The laying the "first stone" of an important building has always been an event duly celebrated; and the practice of some distinguished individual "digging the first spitt" of earth has lately been revived with much pomp and parade, in connection with the great railway undertakings of the present age.- J. B.] ___________________________________

The river Adder riseth about Motcomb, neer Shaftesbury. In the Legeir booke of Wilton Abbey it is wrott Noþþre, "a Nodderi fluvii ripa", (hodie Adder-bourn, Naþþre}, "serpens, anguis", Saxonicè, Addar, in Welsh, signifies a bird.*) This river runnes through the magnificent garden of the Earle of Pembroke at Wilton, and so beyond to Christ Church. It hath in it a rare fish, called an umber, which are sent from Salisbury to London. They are about the bignesse of a trowt, but preferred before a trowt This kind of fish is in no other river in England, except the river Humber in Yorkeshire. [The umber is perhaps more generally known as the grayling. See Chap. XL Fishes.-J. B.]

* [Adar is the plural of Aderyn, a bird, and therefore signifies birds.-J. B.] ___________________________________

The rivulet that gives the name to Chalke-bourn,† and running through Chalke, rises at a place called Naule, belonging to the farme of Broad Chalke, where are a great many springs that issue out of the chalkie ground. It makes a kind of lake of the quantity of about three acres. There are not better trouts (two foot long) in the kingdom of England than here; I was thinking to have made a trout pond of it. The water of this streame washes well, and is good for brewing. I did putt in craw-fish, but they would not live here: the water is too cold for them. This river water is so acrimonious, that strange horses when they are watered here will snuff and snort, and cannot well drinke of it till they have been for some time used to it. Methinks this water should bee admirably good for whitening clothes for cloathiers, because it is impregnated so much with nitre, which is abstersive.

† Bourna, fluvius. (Vener. Bed. Hist. Eceles.) As in some counties they say, In such or such a vale or dale; so in South Wilts they say, such or such a bourn: meaning a valley by such a river. ___________________________________

The river Stour hath its source in Sturton Parke, and gives the name [Stourhead.-J. B.] to that ancient seat of the Lord Sturtons. Three of the springs are within the park pale and in Wiltshire; the other three are without the pale in Somersetshire. The fountaines within the parke pale are curbed with pierced cylinders of free stone, like tunnes of chimneys; the diameter of them is eighteen inches. The coate armour of the Lord Sturton is, Sable, a bend or, between six fountaines; which doe allude to these springs. Stour is a British word, and signifies a great water: sc. "dwr" is water; "ysdwr" is a considerable, or great water: "ys", is "particula augens". [The Stour rises near the junction of the three counties, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Dorsetshire. Its course is chiefly through the last mentioned county, after leaving which it enters Hampshire, and flows into the South Avon near Christchurch.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Deverill hath its denomination from the diving of the rill, and its rising again. Mr. Cambden saieth, In this shire is a small rill called Deverill, which runneth a mile under ground,* like as also doth the little river Mole in Surry, and the river Anas [Guadiana ?-J. B.] in Spain, and the Niger in Africk. Polybius speakes the like of the river Oxus, "which, falling with its force into great ditches, which she makes hollow, and opens the bottome by the violence of her course, and by this meanes takes its course under ground for a small space, and then riseth again." (lib. x.)

* I am informed by the minister of Deverill Longbridge, and another gentleman that lived at Maiden Bradley thirty years, that they never knew or heard of this river Deverall that runs underground.-(BISHOP TANNER.) [Yet Selden, in his "Notes to Drayton's Poly-Olbion", makes the same statement as Aubrey does respecting the Deverill.- J. B.]

"Sic ubi terreno Lycus est epotus hiatu,
Existit procul hinc, alioq{ue} renascitur ore.
Sic modò combibitur, tecto modò gurgite lapsus
Redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in arvis:
Et Mysum capitisq{ue} sui ripaq{ue} prioris
Pœnituisse ferunt, aliò nunc ire, Calcum."
- OVID, METAMORPH. lib. xv.

In Grittleton field is a swallow-hole, where sometimes foxes, &c. doe take sanctuary; there are severall such in North Wiltshire, made by flouds, &c.; but neer Deene is a rivulet that runnes into Emmes-poole, and nobody knowes what becomes of it after it is swallowed by the earth.

[The reader will find a full account of the remarkable "swallows", or "swallow holes", in the course of the river Mole, in Brayley's History of Surrey, vol. i. p. 171-185, with a map, and some geological comments by Dr. Mantell. The river, or stream designated by Aubrey as the Deverill, is probably the principal of several streams which rise near the villages of Longbridge Deverill, Hill Deverill, Brixton Deverill, Monkton Deverill, and Kingston Deverill (in the south west part of Wiltshire), and, after running through Maiden Bradley, flow into the Wyley near Warminster.-J. B.] ___________________________________

At the foot of Martinsoll-hill doe issue forth three springs, which are the sources of three rivers; they divide like the parting of the haire on the crowne of the head, and take their courses three severall wayes: viz. one on the south side of the hill, which is the beginning of the upper Avon,† which runnes to Salisbury; on the other side springes the river Kynet, which runnes eastward to Marleborough;‡ from thence passing by Hungerford, Newbury, &c. it looses itselfe and name in the river of Thames, near Reading. The third spring is the beginning of the stream that runnes to Caln, called Marden,§ and driving several mills, both for corne and fulling, is swallowed up by the North Avon at Peckingill-meadow near Tytherington. [See also Aubrey's description of these three springs, ante, page 24.- J. B.]

† Avon, a river, in the British language. ‡ Cynetium, Marleborough, hath its name from the river. The Welsh pronounce y as wee doe u. § Quaere, if it is called Marden, or Marlen? [Marden is the present name.- J. B.]

The North Avon riseth toward Tedbury in Gloucestershire, and runnes to Malmesbury, where it takes in a good streame, that comes from Hankerton, and also a rivulet that comes from Sherston,* which inriching the meadows as it runnes to Chippenham, Lacock, Bradford, Bath, Kainsham, and the city of Bristowe, disembogues into the Severne at Kingrode.

* [The Sheraton rivulet, and not that which rises near Tetbury, is generally regarded as the source of the North, or Bristol Avon.-J. B.] ___________________________________

The silver Thames takes some part of this county in its journey to Oxford. The source of it is in Gloucestershire, neer Cubberley (in the rode from Oxford to Gloucester), where there are severall springs. In our county it visits Cricklad, a market towne, and gives name to Isey, a village neer; and with its fertile overflowing makes a most glorious verdure in the spring season. In the old deeds of lands at and about Cricklad they find this river by the name of Thamissis fluvius and the Thames. The towne in Oxfordshire is writt Tame and not Thame; and I believe that Mr. Cambden's marriage of Thame and Isis, in his elegant Latin poem, is but a poeticall fiction: I meane as to the name of Thamisis, which he would not have till it comes to meet the river Thame at Dorchester.

[The true source of the river Thames has been much disputed. A spring which rises near the village of Kemble, at the north-western extremity of Wiltshire, has been commonly regarded, during the last century, as the real "Thames head". It flows thence to Ashton Keynes, and onward to Cricklade. At the latter place it is joined by the river Churn, which comes from Coberly, about 20 miles to the northward, in Gloucestershire. Aubrey refers to the latter stream as the source of the Thames; and, on the principle of tracing the origin of a river to its most remote source, the same view has been taken by some other writers, who consequently dispute the claims of the Kemble spring. - J. B.] ___________________________________

The river Thames, as it runnes to Cricklad, passes by Ashton Kaynes;† from whence to Charleton, where the North Avon runnes, is about three miles. Mr. Henry Brigges (Savilian professor of Geometrie at Oxford) observing in the mappe the nearnesse of these two streames, and reflecting on the great use that might accrue if a cutt were made from the one to the other (of which there are many examples in the Low Countreys), tooke a journey from Oxford to view it, and found the ground levell and sappable and was very well pleased with his notion; for that if these two rivers were maried by a canal between them, then might goods be brought from London to Bristow by water, which would be an extraordinary convenience both for safety and to avoid overturning. This was about the yeare 1626. But there had been a long calme of peace, and men minded nothing but pleasure and luxury.

"Jam patimur longæ pacis mala, sævior armis
Luxuria incumbit."- LUCAN.

+ [If Aubrey was right in the preceding paragraph in regarding the stream which rises at "Cubberley" in Gloucestershire as the source of the Thames, he is wrong in stating that "the Thames" passes by Ashton Keynes. It is the other brook, from Kemble, which runs through that village; and the two streams only become united at Cricklade, which is some distance lower down, to the eastward of Ashton Keynes.- J. B.]

Knowledge of this kind was not at all in fashion, so that he had no encouragement to prosecute this noble designe: and no more done but the meer discovery: and not long after he died, scilicet Anno Domini 1631, January 31st.; and this ingeniose notion had died too and beene forgotten, but that Mr. Francis Mathew, (formerly of the county of Dorset, a captain in his majestie King Charles I. service), who was acquainted with him, and had the hint from him, and after the wars ceased revived this designe. Hee tooke much paines about it; went into the countrey and made a mappe of it, and wrote a treatise of it, and addressed himselfe to Oliver the Protector, and the Parliament. Oliver was exceedingly pleased with the designe; and, had he lived but a little longer, he would have had it perfected: but upon his death it sank.

After his Majesties restauration, I recommended Captain Mathew to the Lord Wm. Brouncker, then President of the Royall Societie, who introduced him to his Majestie; who did much approve of the designe; but money was wanting, and publick-spirited contributions; and the Captain had no purse (undonn by the warres), and the heads of the Parliament and Counsell were filled with other things.- Thus the poor old gentleman's project came to nothing.

He died about 1676, and left many good papers behind him concerning this matter, in the hands of his daughters; of which I acquainted Mr. John Collins, R.S.S. in An°. 1682, who tooke a journey to Oxford (which journey cost him his life, by a cold), and first discoursed with the barge-men there concerning their trade and way: then he went to Lechlade, and discoursed with the bargemen there; who all approved of the designe. Then he took a particular view of the ground to be cutt between Ashton-kaynes and Charleton. From Malmesbury he went to Bristoll. Then he returned to Malmesbury again and went to Wotton Bassett, and took a view of that way. Sir Jonas Moore told me he liked that way, but J. Collins was clearly for the cutt between Ashton-Kayns and Charleton.

At his return to London I went with him to the daughters of Mr. Mathew, who shewed him their father's papers; sc. draughts, modells, copper-plate of the mappe of the Thames, Acts of Parliament, and Bills prepared to be enacted, &c.; as many as did fill a big portmantue. He proposed the buying of them to the R. Societie, and tooke the heads of them, and gave them an abstract of them. The papers, &c. were afterwards brought to. the R. Societie; the price demanded for all was but five pounds (the plate of the mappe did cost 8li.) The R. Societie liked the designe; but they would neither undertake the businesse nor buy the papers. So that noble knight, Sir James Shaen, R.S.S., who was then present, slipt five guineas into J. Collins's hand to give to the poor gentlewomen, and so immediately became master of these rarities. There were at the Societie at the same time three aldermen of the city of London (Sir Jo. Laurence, Sir Patient Ward, and …. ….), fellows of the Society, who when they heard that Sir James Shaen had gott the possession of them were extremely vex't; and repented (when 'twas too late) that they had overslipped such an opportunity: then they would have given 30li. This undertaking had been indeed most proper for the hon{oura}ble city of London.

Jo. Collins writt a good discourse of this journey, and of the feazability, and a computation of the chardge. Quaere, whether he left a copie with the R. Society. Mr. Win, mathematicall instrument maker in Chancery-lane, had all his papers, and amongst many others is to be found this.

I have been the more full in this account, because if ever it shall happen that any publick-spirited men shall arise to carry on such a usefull work, they may know in whose hands the papers that were so well considered heretofore are now lodged.

Sir Jonas Moore, Surveyor of the Ordinance, told me that when the Duke of York sent him to survey the manor of Dauntesey, formerly belonging to Sir Jo. Danvers, he did then take a survey of this designe, and said that it is feazable; but his opinion was that the best way would be to make a cutt by Wotton Bassett, and that the King himselfe should undertake it, for they must cutt through a hill by Wotton-Basset; and that in time it might quit cost. As I remember, he told me that forty thousand pounds would doe it.

But I thinke, Jo. Collins sayes in his papers, that the cutt from
Ashton-Kains to Charleton may bee made for three thousand pounds.

[Some of the above facts are more briefly stated by Aubrey in his "Description of North Wiltshire" (printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart.) They are however sufficiently interesting to be inserted here; and they clearly shew that, notwithstanding Aubrey's credulity and love of theory, he was fully sensible of the beneficial results to be expected from increased facilities of conveyance and locomotion. On this point indeed he and his friends, Mr. Mathew and Mr. Collins, were more than a century in advance of their contemporaries, for it was not till after the year 1783 that Wiltshire began to profit by the formation of canals.

Sanctioned by the approval of King Charles the Second, for which, as above stated, he was indebted to Aubrey, Francis Mathew published an explanation of his project for the junction of the Thames with the Bristol Avon. This work, which advocated similar canals in other parts of the country, bears the following title: "A Mediterranean Passage by water from London to Bristol, and from Lynn to Yarmouth, and so consequently to the city of York, for the great advancement of trade." (Lond. 1670, 4to.) An extract from this scarce volume is transcribed by Aubrey into the Royal Society's MS. of his own work; and a copy of Mr. Mathew's map, which illustrated it, is also there inserted.

The liberality of Sir James Shaen in the purchase of Mathew's papers, and the apathy of the London aldermen, until too late to secure them, are amusingly described. Similar instances of civic meanness are not wanting in the present day; indeed the indifference of corporate authorities to scientific topics is strikingly illustrated by the fact that the Royal Society has not at present enrolled upon its list of Fellows a single member of the corporation of London; whereas in Aubrey's time there were no less than three.

The short canal projected in the seventeenth century to connect the Thames and Avon has never been executed: subsequent speculators having found that the wants and necessities of the country could be better supplied by other and longer lines of water communication. Hence we have the Thames and Severn Canal, from Lechlade to Stroud, commenced in 1783; the Kennet and Avon Canal, from Newbury to Bath, begun in 1796; and the Wilts and Berks Canal (1801), from Abingdon to a point on the last mentioned canal between Devizes and Bradford.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Mdm.-The best and cheapest way of making a canal is by ploughing; which method ought to be applied for the cheaper making the cutt between the two rivers of Thames and Avon. The same way serves for making descents in a garden on the side of a hill.- See …… Castello della Currenti del Acquo, 4to; which may be of use for this undertaking.

Consider the scheme in Captain Yarrington's book, entitled "England's
Improvement", as to the establishing of granaries at severall townes
on the Thames and Avon; e. g. at Lechlade, Cricklade, &c. See also
Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vi. c. 11.

At Funthill Episcopi, higher towards Hindon, water riseth and makes a streame before a dearth of corne, that is to say, without raine; and is commonly look't upon by the neighbourhood as a certain presage of a dearth; as, for example, the dearness of corne in 1678.

So at Morecomb-bottome, in the parish of Broad Chalke, on the north side of the river, it has been observed time out of mind, that, when the water breaketh out there, that it foreshewes a deare yeare of corne; and I remember it did so in the yeare 1648. Plinie saieth (lib. ii. Nat. Hist.) that the breaking forth of some rivers "annonæ mutationem significant".

[At Weston-Birt, in Gloucestershire, near the borders of Wiltshire, water gushes from the ground in spring and autumn, and at other times, in many hundred places at once, and continues to flow with great rapidity for several days, when the whole valley, in which the houses are placed, is completely filled. The street of the village is provided with numerous rude bridges, which on these occasions become available for purposes of communication.-J. B.] ___________________________________

'Tis a saying in the West, that a dry yeare does never cause a dearth.

Anno 1669, at Yatton Keynel, and at Broomfield in that parish, they went a great way to water their cattle; and about 1640 the springs in these parts did not breake till neer Christmas.

CHAPTER IV. SOILES.

[THIS and the three succeeding chapters, on "Mineralls and Fossills," "Stones," and "Formed Stones", comprise the Geological portions of Aubrey's work. In a scientific view, these chapters may be regarded as of little value; though creditable to their author as a minute observer, and enthusiastic lover of science. It has been necessary to omit much which the progress of scientific knowledge has rendered obsolete; and in the passages quoted, the object has been to select such as possessed the most general interest, as well as having direct application to Wiltshire. A good summary of the Geological characteristics of the county will be found in the article "Wiltshire," in the Penny Cyclopædia. Mr. John Provis, of Chippenham, contributed a similar sketch to the third volume of the Beauties of Wiltshire; and the geology of Salisbury and its vicinity is described in Hatcher's History of Salisbury, by the son of the historian, Mr. W. H. Hatcher.-J. B.]

THIS county hath great variety of earth. It is divided, neer about the middle, from east to west into the dowries; commonly called Salisbury- plaine, which are the greatest plaines in Europe: and into the vale; which is the west end of the vale of Whitehorse.

The vale is the northern part; the soile whereof is what wee call a stone-brash; sc. red earth, full of a kind of tile-stone, in some places good tiles. It beareth good barley. In the west places of the soile, wormewood growes very plentifully; whereas in the south part they plant it in their garden.

The soile of Malmesbury hundred, which is stone-brash and clay, and the earth vitriolish, produces excellent okes, which seem to delight in a vitriolate soile, and where iron oare is. The clay and stones doe hinder the water from sinking down, whereby the surface of the earth becomes dropsicall, and beares mosse and herbs naturall to such moist ground. In the ploughed fields is plenty of yarrow; in the pasture grounds plenty of wood wax; and in many grounds plenty of centaury, wood sorrell, ladies' bed-straw, &c., sowre herbes.

I never saw in England so much blew clay as in the northern part of this county, and it continues from the west part to Oxfordshire. Under the planke-stones is often found blew marle, which is the best. ___________________________________

In Vernknoll, a ground belonging to Fowles-wick, adjoyning to the lands of Easton-Pierse, neer the brooke and in it, I bored clay as blew as ultra-marine, and incomparably fine, without anything of sand, &c., which perhaps might be proper for Mr. Dwight for his making of porcilaine. It is also at other places hereabout, but 'tis rare.

[It is not very clear that "blew clay," however fine, could be "proper for the making of porcilane," the chief characteristic of which is its transparent whiteness. Apart from this however, Aubrey's remark is curious; as it intimates that the manufacture of it was attempted in this country at an earlier period than is generally believed. The famous porcelain works at Chelsea were not established till long afterwards; and according to Dr. Plott, whose "Natural History of Staffordshire" was published in 1686, the only kinds of pottery then made in this country were the coarse yellow, red, black, and mottled wares; and of those the chief sale was to "poor crate-men, who carried them on their backs all over the country", I have not found any account of the Mr. Dwight mentioned by Aubrey, or of his attempts to improve the art of pottery.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Clay abounds, particularly about Malmesbury, Kington St. Michael,
Allington, Easton Piers (as also a hungry marle), Dracott-Cerne,
Yatton-Keynell, Minty, and Bradon-forest.

At Minty, and at a place called Woburn, in the parish of Hankerton, is very good fullers'-earth. The fullers'-earth at Minty-common, at the place called the Gogges, when I tooke it up, was as black as black polished marble; but, having carryed it in my pocket five or six dayes, it became gray.

At Hedington, at the foot of the hill, is a kind of white fullers'- earth which the cloth-workers doe use; and on the north side of the river at Broad Chalke, by a poole where are fine springs (where the hermitage is), is a kind of fullers'-earth which the weavers doe use for their chaines: 'tis good Tripoly, or "lac lunæ". Lac lunæ is the mother of silver, and is a cosmetick.

In Boudon-parke, fifteen foot deep under the barren sand, is a great plenty of blew marle, with which George Johnson, Esq., councellor-at- law, hath much improved his estate there. The soile of the parke was so exceedingly barren, that it did beare a gray mosse, like that of an old park pale, which skreeks as one walkes on it, and putts ones teeth on edge. Furzes did peep a little above the ground, but were dwarfes and did not thrive.

At Bitteston, in the highway, blew marle appears. Mr. Montjoy hath drawn the water that runnes through it, and is impregnated with its nitre, into his pasture grounds, by which meanes they are improved from —— to —— per annum. ___________________________________

In Bradon-forest, and at Ashton Kaynes, is a pottery. There is potters' clay also at . .. . Deverell, on the common towards Frome, and potts are made there. ___________________________________

At Clarendon-parke is lately discovered (1684) an earth that cleanseth better than Woburne earthe in Bedfordshire; and Mr. Cutler, the cloathier of Wilton, tells me he now makes only use of it. There is at Burton-hill, juxta Malmesbury, fullers' earth, as also about Westport, and elsewhere thereabout, which the cloathiers use.

Tobacco-pipe-clay excellent, or the best in England, at Chittern, of which the Gauntlet pipes at Amesbury are made, by one of that name. They are the best tobacco pipes in England. [See a curious paragraph on the subject of Gauntlet-pipes in Fuller's Worthies,- Wiltshire.-J. B.] ___________________________________

The earth about Malmesbury hundred and Chippenham hundred, especially about Pewsham-forest, is vitriolate, or aluminous and vitriolate; which in hot weather the sun does make manifest on the banks of the ditches.

At Bradfield and Dracot Cerne is such vitriolate earth; which with galles will make inke. This makes the land so soure, it beares sowre and austere plants: it is a proper soile for dayries. At summer it hunger-banes the sheep; and in winter it rotts them.

These clayy and marly lands are wett and dirty; so that to poore people, who have not change of shoes, the cold is very incommodious, which hurts their nerves exceedingly. Salts, as the Lord Chancellor Bacon sayes, doe exert (irradiate) raies of cold. Elias Ashmole, Esq. got a dangerous cold by sitting by the salt sacks in a salter's shop, which was like to have cost him his life. And some salts will corrode papers, that were three or four inches from it. The same may be sayd of marble pavements, which have cost some great persons their lives. ___________________________________

The soil of South Wilts is chalke and white marle, which abounds with nitre; and is inimique to the nerves by the nitre that irradiates from it. 'Tis that gives the dampishnesse to the flowres and walles of Salisbury and Chalke, &c. E contra, Herefordshire, Salop, Montgomeryshire, &c. the soile is clear of any salt; which, besides the goodnesse of the air, conduces much to their longævitas: e. g., 100 yeares of age in those parts as common as 80 in Wilts, &c.

The walles of the church of Broad Chalke, and of the buttery at the farme there, doe shoot out, besides nitre, a beautifull red, lighter than scarlet; an oriental horse-flesh colour.

The soile of Savernake forest is great gravelle: and (as I remember) pebbley, as on the sea side. At Alderbury, by Ivy Church, is great plenty of fine gravelle; which is sent for all over the south parts of the countrey.

At Sutton Benger eastward is a gravelly field called Barrets, which is sown every year onely with barley: it hath not lain fallow in the memory of the oldest man's grandfather there. About 1665 Mr. Leonard Atkins did sow his part of it with wheat for a triall. It came up wonderfully thick and high; but it proved but faire strawe, and had little or nothing in the eare. This land was heretofore the vineyard belonging to the abbey of Malmesbury; of which there is a recitall in the grant of this manner by K. Henry VIII. to Sir —— Long. This fruitfull ground is within a foot or lesse of the gravell. ___________________________________

The soil of Christian Malford, a parish adjoyning to Sutton, is very rich, and underneath is gravell in many parts. ___________________________________

The first ascent from Chippenham, sc. above the Deny hill, is sandy: e. g. Bowdon-parke, Spy-parke, Sandy-lane, great clear sand, of which I believe good glasse might be made; but it is a little too far from a navigable river. They are ye biggest graines of sand that ever I saw, and very transparent: some where thereabout is sand quite white.

At Burbidge the soile is an ash-coloured gray sand, and very naturall for the production of good turnips. They are the best that ever I did eate, and are sent for far and neere: they are not tough and stringy like other turnips, but cutt like marmalad.

Quaere, how long the trade of turnips has been here? For it is certain that all the turnips that were brought to Bristoll eighty years since [now 1680] were from Wales; and now none come from thence, for they have found out that the red sand about Bristoll doth breed a better and a bigger turnip.

Burbidge is also remarqueable for excellent pease. ___________________________________

The turf of our downes, and so east and west, is the best in the world for gardens and bowling- greens; for more southward it is burnt, and more north it is course.

Temple downe in Preshut parish, belonging to the right honble Charles
Lord Seymour, worth xxs. per acre, and better, a great quantity of it.

As to the green circles on the downes, vulgarly called faiery circles (dances), I presume they are generated from the breathing out of a fertile subterraneous vapour. (The ring-worme on a man's flesh is circular. Excogitate a paralolisme between the cordial heat and ye subterranean heat, to elucidate this phenomenon.) Every tobacco-taker knowes that 'tis no strange thing for a circle of smoke to be whiff'd out of the bowle of the pipe; but 'tis donne by chance. If you digge under the turfe of this circle, you will find at the rootes of the grasse a hoare or mouldinesse. But as there are fertile steames, so contrary wise there are noxious ones, which proceed from some mineralls, iron, &c.; which also as the others, cæteris paribus, appear in a circular forme. ___________________________________

In the common field of Winterbourn …… is the celebrated path called St. Thomas Becket's path. It leads from the village up to Clarendon Parke. Whether this field be sown or lies fallow, the path is visible to one that lookes on it from the hill, and it is wonderfull. But I can add yet farther the testimonies of two that I very well know (one of them my servant, and of an excellent sight) that will attest that, riding in the rode from London one morning in a great snow, they did see this path visible on the snow. St. Thomas Becket, they say, was sometime a cure priest at Winter-bourn, and did use to goe along this path up to a chapell in Clarendon Parke, to say masse, and very likely 'tis true: but I have a conceit that this path is caused by a warme subterraneous steame from a long crack in the earth, which may cause snow to dissolve sooner there than elsewhere: and consequently gives the dissolving snow a darker colour, just as wee see the difference of whites in damask linnen.

The right reverend father in God, Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, averres to me that at Silchester in Hampshire, which was a Roman citie, one may discerne in the corne ground the signe of the streetes; nay, passages and hearthes: which also Dr. Jo. Wilkins (since Lord Bishop of Chester) did see with him, and has affirm'd the same thing to me. They were there, and saw it in the spring.

——— "ita res accendunt lumina rebus".- LUCRETIUS. ___________________________________

The pastures of the vale of White Horse, sc. the first ascent below the plaines, are as rich a turfe as any in the kingdom of England: e. g. the Idovers at Dauntesey, of good note in Smithfield, which sends as fatt cattle to Smythfield as any place in this nation; as also Tytherton, Queenfield, Wroughton, Tokenham, Mudgelt, Lydyard Tregoz, and about Cricklad, are fatting grounds, the garden of Wiltshire. ___________________________________

In a little meadow called Mill-mead, belonging to the farme of Broad Chalke, is good peate, which in my father's time was digged and made use of; and no doubt it is to be found in many other places of this country, if it were search't after. But I name it onely to bring in a discovery that Sr Christopher Wren made of it, sc. that 'tis a vegetable, which was not known before. One of the pipes at Hampton Court being stop't, Sr Christopher commanded to have it opened (I think he say'd 'twas an earthen pipe), and they found it choak't with peate,* which consists of a coagmentation of small fibrous vegetables. These pipes were layd in Cardinal Wolsey's time, who built the house.

* I believe that in ye pipes was nothing else but Alga fontalis trichodes, (C. B.) which is often found in conduit pipes. See my Synopsis.-[JOHN RAY.]

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Earth growing. - In the court of Mrs. Sadler's, the great house in the close in Salisbury, the pitched causeway lay neglected in the late troubles, and not weeded: so at lengthe it became overgrown and lost: and I remember about 1656, goeing to pave it, they found,…. inches deep, a good pavement to their hands.

In the court of my honoured friend Edm. Wyld Esq., at Houghton in Bedfordshire, in twenty-four yeares, viz. from 1656 to 1680, the ground increased nine inches, only by rotting grasse upon grasse. 'Tis a rich soile, and reddish; worth xxs. per acre. ___________________________________

The spring after the conflagration at London all the ruines were overgrown with an herbe or two; but especially one with a yellow flower: and on the south side of St. Paul's Church it grew as thick as could be; nay, on the very top of the tower. The herbalists call it Ericolevis Neapolitana, small bank cresses of Naples; which plant Tho. Willis told me he knew before but in one place* about the towne; and that was at Battle Bridge by the Pindar of Wakefield, and that in no great quantity. [The Pindar of Wakefield is still a public-house, under the same sign, in Gray's Inn Road, in the parish of St. Pancras, London.- J. B.]

*It growes abundantly by ye waysides between London and Kensington.-
[J. RAY.]

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Sir John Danvers, of Chelsey, did assure me to his knowledge that my Lord Chancellor Bacon was wont to compound severall sorts of earths, digged up very deep, to produce severall sorts of plants. This he did in the garden at Yorke House, where he lived when he was Lord Chancellor. (See Sir Ken. Digby, concerning his composition of earth of severall places.)

Edmund Wyld, Esq. R.S.S. hath had a pott of composition in his garden these seven yeares that beares nothing at all, not so much as grasse or mosse. He makes his challenge, if any man will give him xx li. he will give him an hundred if it doth not beare wheate spontaneously; and the party shall keep the key, and he shall sift the earth composition through a fine sieve, so that he may be sure there are no graines of wheat in it He hath also a composition for pease; but that he will not warrant, not having yet tryed it, ___________________________________

Pico's [Peaks.] - In this county are Clay-hill, near Warminster; the Castle-hill at Mere, and Knoll-hill, near Kilmanton, which is half in Wilts, and half in Somersetshire; all which seem to have been raised (like great blisters) by earthquakes. [Bishop TANNER adds in a note, "Suthbury hill, neer Collingburn, which I take to be the highest hill hi Wiltshire".] That great vertuoso, Mr. Francis Potter, author of the "Interpretation of 666,"† Rector of Kilmanton, took great delight in this Knoll-hill. It gives an admirable prospect every way; from hence one may see the foss-way between Cyrencester and Glocester, which is fourty miles from this place. You may see the Isle of Wight, Salisbury steeple, the Severne sea, &c. It would be an admirable station for him that shall make a geographical description of Wilts, Somersett, &c.

†[The full title of the work referred to is a curiosity in literature. It exemplifies forcibly the abstruse and mystical researches in which the literati of the seventeenth century indulged.

"An Interpretation of the Number 666; wherein not only the manner how this Number ought to be interpreted is clearly proved and demonstrated; but it is also shewed that this Number is an exquisite and perfect character, truly, exactly, and essentially describing that state of government to which all other notes of Antichrist do agree; with all knowne objections solidly and fully answered that can be materially made against it". (Oxford, 1642, 4to.) So general were studies of this nature at the time, that Potter's volume was translated into French, Dutch, and Latin. The author, though somewhat visionary, was a profound mathematician, and invented several ingenious mechanical instruments. In Aubrey's "Lives", appended to the Letters from the Bodleian, 8vo. 1813, will be found an interesting biographical notice of him.-J. B.]

CHAPTER V. MINERALLS AND FOSSILLS.

[IN its etymological sense the term fossil signifies that which may be dug out of the earth. It is strictly applicable therefore, not only to mineral bodies, and the petrified forms of plants and animals found in the substance of the earth, but even to antiquities and works of art, discovered in a similar situation. The chapter of Aubrey's work now under consideration mentions only mineralogical subjects; whence it would appear that he employed the term "mineralls" instead of "metals", including such mineral substances as were not metals under the general term "fossills".

At present the term fossil is restricted to antediluvian organic remains; which are considered by Aubrey, in Chapter VII. under the name of "Formed Stones".-J. B.]

THIS county cannot boast much of mineralls: it is more celebrated for superficiall treasure.

At Dracot Cerne and at Easton Piers doe appeare at the surface of the earth frequently a kind of bastard iron oare, which seems to be a vancourier of iron oare, but it is in small quantity and course.

At Send, vulgarly called Seen, the hill whereon it stands is iron- oare, and the richest that ever I saw. (See Chap. II.)

About Hedington fields, Whetham, Bromham, Bowdon Parke, &c. are still ploughed-up cindres; sc. the scoria of melted iron, which must have been smelted by the Romans (for the Saxons were no artists), who used only foot-blasts, and so left the best part of the metall behind. These cinders would be of great use for the fluxing of the iron-oare at Send. ___________________________________

At Redhill, in the parish of….. (I thinke Calne) they digge plenty of ruddle; which is a bolus, and with which they drench their sheep and cattle for ……… and poor people use it with good successe for …… This is a red sandy hill, tinged by {iron}, and is a soile that bears very good carrets. ___________________________________

Mr. John Power of Kington St. Michael (an emperick) told me heretofore that in Pewsham Forest is vitriol; which information he had from his uncle Mr. …. Perm, who was an ingeniose and learned man in those daies, and a chymist, which was then rare. ___________________________________

At Dracot Cerne is good quantity of vitriol-oare, which with galles turnes as black as inke.

About the beginning of the raigne of King James the First, Sir Walter Long [of Dracot] digged for silver, a deep pitt, through blew clay, and gott five pounds worth, for sixty pounds charges or more. It was on the west end of the stable: but I doubt there was a cheat put upon him. Here are great indications of iron, and it may be of coale; but what hopes he should have to discover silver does passe my understanding. There was a great friendship between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Walter Long, and they were allied: and the pitt was sunk in Sir W. Raleigh's time, so that he must certainly have been consulted with. I have here annexed Sir James Long's letter.

"Mr. Aubrey, I cannot obey your commands concerning my grandfather's sinking of pitts for metalls here at Draycott, there being no person alive hereabouts who was born at that time. What I have heard was so long since, and I then so young, that there is little heed to be taken of what I can say; but in generall I can say that I doe believe here are many metalls and mineralls in these parts; particularly silver- oare of the blew sort, of which there are many stones in the bottome of the river Avon, which are extremely heavy, and have the hardnesse of a file, by reason of the many minerall and metalline veines. I have consulted many bookes treating of minerall matters, and find them suite exactly with the Hungarian blew silver oare. Some sixteen or eighteen yeares ago in digging a well neer my house, many stones very weighty where digged out of the rocks, which also slaked with long lyeing in the weather. I shewed some to Monsieur Cock, since Baron of Crownstronie in Sweden, who had travelled ten yeares to all the mines in North Europe, and was recommended to me by a London merchant, in his journey to Mindip, and staied with me here about three weekes. He told me the grains in that oare seemed to be gold rather than copper; they resembled small pinnes heads. Wee pounded some of it, and tried to melt the dust unwashed in a crucible; but the sulphur carried the metall away, if there was any, as he said. He has been in England since, by the name of Baron Crownstrome, to treat from his master the King of Sweden, over whose mines he is superintendant, as his father was before him. The vitriol-oare we find here is like suckwood, which being layd in a dry place slakes itself into graine of blew vitriol, calcines red, and with a small quantitie of galles makes our water very black inke. It is acid tasted as other vitriol, and apt to raise a flux in the mouth. Sir, yours, &c.

August 12, 1689. J. L". ___________________________________

"In the parish of Great Badminton, in a field called Twelve Acres, the husbandmen doe often times plough up and find iron bulletts, as big as pistoll bulletts; sometimes almost as big as muskett bulletts". Dr. Childrey's Britannia Baconica, p. 80. ["Britannia Baconica, or the Natural Rarities of England, Scotland, and Wales, historically related, according to the precepts of Lord Bacon". By Joshua Childrey, D.D. 1661. 8°.]

These bulletts are Dr. Th. Willises aperitive pills; sc. he putts a barre of iron into the smith's forge, and gives it a sparkling heat; then thrusts it against a roll of brimstone, and the barre will melt down into these bulletts; of which he made his aperitive pills. In this region is a great deale of iron, and the Bath waters give sufficient evidence that there is store of sulphur; so that heretofore when the earthquakes were hereabouts, store of such bulletts must necessarily be made and vomited up. [Dr. Willis was one of the most eminent physicians of his age, and author of numerous Latin works on medical subjects. The above extract is a curious illustration of the state of professional knowledge at the time. - J. B.] ___________________________________

Copperas. - Thunder-stones, as the vulgar call them, are a pyrites; their fibres doe all tend to the centre. They are found at Broad Chalke frequently, and particularly in the earth pitts belonging to the parsonage shares, below Bury Hill, next Knighton hedge; but wee are too fare from a navigable river to make profit by them; but at the Isle of Wight they are gathered .from the chalkie rocks, and carried by boates to Deptford, to make copperas; where they doe first expose them to the aire

and raine, which makes them slake, and fall to pieces from the centre, and shoot out a pale blewish salt; and then they boile the salt with pieces of old rusty iron. ___________________________________

In the chalkie rocks at Lavington is umber, which painters have used, and Dr. Chr. Meret hath inserted it in his Pinax. ["Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum, continens Vegetabilia, Animalia, et Fossilia in hac Insula reperta". By Christopher Merret, M.D., 1666, 12mo.] ___________________________________

In the parish of Steeple Ashton, at West Ashton, in the grounds of Mr. Tho. Beech, is found plenty of a very ponderous marchasite, of which Prince Rupert made tryall, but without effect. It flieth away in sulphur, and the fumes are extreme unwholsom: it is full of (as it were) brasse, and strikes fire very well. It is mundick, or mock-oare. The Earle of Pembroke hath a way to analyse it: not by fire, but by corroding waters.

Anno Domini, 1685, in Chilmark, was found by digging of a well a blewish oare, with brasse-like veines in it; it runnes two foot thick. I had this oare tryed, and it flew away in sulphur, like that of Steeple Ashton. ___________________________________

On Flamstone downe (in the parish of Bishopston) neer the Race-way a quarrie of sparre exerts itselfe to the surface of the turfe. It is the finest sparre that ever I beheld. I have made as good glasse of this sparre as the Venice glasse. It is of a bright colour with a very little tincture of yellow; transparent; and runnes in stirias, like nitre; it is extraordinary hard till it is broken, and then it breakes into very minute pieces. ___________________________________

We have no mines of lead; nor can I well suspect where we should find any: but not far off in Glocestershire, at Sodbury, there is. Capt. Ralph Greatorex, the mathematical instrument maker, sayes that it is good lead, and that it was a Roman lead-worke. ___________________________________

Tis some satisfaction to know where a minerall is not. Iron or coale is not to be look't for in a chalky country. As yet we have not discovered any coale in this county; but are supplied with it from Glocestershire adjoyning, where the forest of Kingswood (near Bristowe) aboundeth most with coale of any place in the west of England: all that tract under ground full of this fossill. It is very observable that here are the most holly trees of any place in the west. It seemes to me that the holly tree delights in the effluvium of this fossil, which may serve as a guide to find it. I was curious to be satisfied whether holly trees were also common about the collieries at Newcastle, and Dr.. .. . , Deane of Durham, affirmes they are. These indications induce me to thinke it probable that coale may be found in Dracot Parke. The Earledomes, near Downton, (woods so called belonging to the Earledome of Pembroke,) for the same reason, not unlike ground for coale.

They have tryed for coale at Alderbery Common, but was baffled in it. (I have heard it credibly reported that coale has been found in Urchfont parish, about fifty or sixty yeares since; but upon account of the scarcity of workmen, depth of the coale, and the then plenty of firing out of ye great wood called Crookwood, it did not quit the cost, and so the mines were stop'd up. There hath been great talk several times of searching after coale here again. Crookwood, once full of sturdy oakes, is now destroyed, and all sort of fuel very dear in all the circumjacent country. It lies very commodious, being situate about the middle of the whole county; three miles from the populous town of the Devises, two miles from Lavington, &c.-BISHOP TANNER.)

[Several abortive attempts have been made at different periods to find coal on Malmesbury Common.-J. B.]

CHAPTER VI. STONES.

I WILL begin with freestone (lapis arenarius), as the best kind of stone that this country doth afford.

The quarre at Haselbury [near Box] was most eminent for freestone in the western parts, before the discovery of the Portland quarrie, which was but about anno 1600. The church of Portland, which stands by the sea side upon the quarrie, (which lies not very deep, sc. ten foot), is of Cane stone, from Normandie. Malmesbury Abbey and the other Wiltshire religious houses are of Haselbury stone. The old tradition is that St. Adelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, riding over the ground at Haselbury, did throw down his glove, and bad them dig there, and they should find great treasure, meaning the quarre. ___________________________________

AT Chilmarke is a very great quarrie of freestone, whereof the
religious houses of the south part of Wiltshire and Dorset were built.
[The walls, buttresses, and other substantial parts of Salisbury
Cathedral are constructed of the Chilmarke stone. - J. B.]

At Teffont Ewyas is a quarrie of very good white freestone, not long since discovered.

At Compton Basset is a quarrie of soft white stone betwixt chalke and freestone: it endures fire admirably well, and would be good for reverbatory furnaces: it is much used for ovens and hearth-stones: it is as white as chalke. At my Lord Stowell's house at Aubury is a chimney piece carved of it in figures; but it doth not endure the weather, and therefore it ought not to be exposed to sun and raine.

At Yatton Keynel, in Longdean, is a freestone quarrie, but it doth not endure the weather well.

In Alderton-field is a freestone quarrie, discovered a little before the civill-warres broke forth.

In Bower Chalke field, in the land that belongs to the farme of Broad Chalke, is a quarrie of freestone of a dirty greenish colour, very soft, but endures the weather well. The church and houses there are built with it, and the barne of the farme, w{hi}ch is of great antiquity. ___________________________________

The common stone in Malmesbury hundred and thereabout is oftentimes blewish in the inside, and full of very small cockles, as at Easton Piers. These stones are dampish and sweate, and doe emitt a cold and unwholsome dampe, sc. the vitriolate petrified salt in it exerts itselfe.

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I know no where in this county that lime is made, unlesse it be made of Chalke stones: whereas between Bath and Bristoll all the stone is lime-stone. If lime were at xs. or xxs. per lib. it would be valued above all other drugges. ___________________________________

At Swindon is a quarrie of stones, excellent for paveing halls, staire-cases, &c; it being pretty white and smooth, and of such a texture as not to be moist or wett in damp weather. It is used at London in Montagu-house, and in Barkeley-house &c. (and at Cornberry, Oxon. JOHN EVELYN). This stone is not inferior to Purbac grubbes, but whiter. It takes a little polish, and is a dry stone. It was discovered but about 1640, yet it lies not above four or five foot deep. It is near the towne, and not above [ten] miles from the river of Thames at Lechlade. [The Wilts and Berks Canal and the Great Western Railway now pass close to the town of Swindon, and afford great faculties for the conveyance of this stone, which is now in consequence very extensively used.- J. B.] ___________________________________

If Chalk may be numbred among stones, we have great plenty of it. I doe believe that all chalke was once marle; that is, that chalke has undergone subterraneous bakeings, and is become hard: e. g, as wee make tobacco-pipes. ___________________________________

Pebbles. - The millers in our country use to putt a black pebble under the pinne of ye axis of the mill-wheele, to keep the brasse underneath from wearing; and they doe find by experience, that nothing doth weare so long as that. The bakers take a certain pebble, which they putt in the vaulture of their oven, which they call the warning-stone: for when that is white the oven is hot.

In the river Avon at Lacock are large round pebbles. I have not seen the like elsewhere. Quaere, if any transparent ones? From Merton, southward to the sea, is pebbly.

There was a time when all pebbles were liquid. Wee find them all ovalish. How should this come to passe? As for salts, some shoot cubicall, some hexagonall. Why might there not be a time, when these pebbles were making in embryone (in fieri), for such a shooting as falls into an ovalish figure?

Pebbles doe breake according to the length of the greatest diameter: but those wee doe find broken in the earth are broken according to their shortest diameter. I have broken above an hundred of them, to try to have one broken at the shortest diameter, to save the charge and paines of grinding them for molers to grind colours for limming; and they all brake the long way as aforsayd. ___________________________________

Black flints are found in great plenty in the chalkie country. They are a kind of pyrites, and are as regular; 'tis certain they have been "in fluore".

Excellent fire-flints are digged up at Dun's Pit in Groveley, and fitted for gunnes by Mr. Th. Sadler of Steeple Langford. ___________________________________

Anno 1655, I desired Dr. W. Harvey to tell me how flints were generated. He sayd to me that the black of the flint is but a natural vitrification of the chalke: and added that the medicine of the flint is excellent for the stone, and I thinke he said for the greene sicknesse; and that in some flints are found stones in next degree to a diamond. The doctor had his armes and his wife's cutt in such a one, which was bigger than the naile of my middle finger; found at Folkston in Kent, where he told me he was borne.

In the stone-brash country in North Wilts flints are very rare, and those that are found are but little. I once found one, when I was a little boy learning to read, in the west field by Easton Piers, as big as one's fist, and of a kind of liver colour. Such coloured flints are very common in and about Long Lane near Stuston, [Sherston ?-J. B.] and no where else that I ever heard of.

It is reported that at Tydworth a diamond was found in a flint, which the Countess of Marleborough had set in a ring. I have seen small fluores in flints (sparkles in the hollow of flints) like diamonds; but when they are applied to the diamond mill they are so soft that they come to nothing. But, had he that first found out the way of cutting transparent pebbles (which was not long before the late civill warres) kept it a secret, he might have got thousands of pounds by it; for there is no way to distinguish it from a diamond but by the mill. ___________________________________

I shall conclude with the stones called the Grey Wethers; which lye scattered all over the downes about Marleborough, and incumber the ground for at least seven miles diameter; and in many places they are, as it were, sown so thick, that travellers in the twylight at a distance take them to be flocks of sheep (wethers) from whence they have their name. So that this tract of ground looks as if it had been the scene where the giants had fought with huge stones against the Gods, as is described by Hesiod in his {Gk: theogonia}.

They are also (far from the rode) commonly called Sarsdens, or Sarsdon stones. About two or three miles from Andover is a village called Sersden, i. e. Csars dene, perhaps don: Cæsar's dene, Cæsar's plains; now Salisbury plaine. (So Salisbury, Cæsaris Burgus.) But I have mett with this kind of stones sometimes as far as from Christian Malford in Wilts to Abington; and on the downes about Royston, &c. as far as Huntington, are here and there those Sarsden-stones. They peep above the ground a yard and more high, bigger and lesser. Those that lie in the weather are so hard that no toole can touch them. They take a good polish. As for their colour, some are a kind of dirty red, towards porphyry; some perfect white; some dusky white; some blew, like deep blew marle; some of a kind of olive greenish colour; but generally they are whitish. Many of them are mighty great ones, and particularly those in Overton Wood. Of these kind of stones are framed the two stupendous antiquities of Aubury and Stone-heng. I have heard the minister of Aubury say those huge stones may be broken in what part of them you please without any great trouble. The manner is thus: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it to crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water, and immediately give a smart knock with a smyth's sledge, and it will breake like the collets at the glasse-house. [This system of destruction is still adopted on the downs in the neighbourhood of Avebury. Many of the upright stones of the great Celtic Temple in that parish have been thus destroyed in my time.- J. B.]

Sir Christopher Wren sayes they doe pitch (incline) all one way, like arrowes shot. Quaere de hoc, and if so to what part of the heavens they point? Sir Christopher thinks they were cast up by a vulcano.

CHAPTER VII. OF FORMED STONES.

[AUBREY, and other writers of his time, designated by this term the fossil remains of antediluvian animals and vegetables. This Chapter is very brief in the manuscript; and the following are the only passages adapted for this publication.

The numerous excavations which have been made in the county since Aubrey's time have led to the discovery of a great abundance of organic remains; especially in the northern part of the county, from Swindon to Chippenham and Box. Large collections have been made by Mr. John Provis and Mr. Lowe, of Chippenham, which it is hoped will be preserved in some public museum, for the advantage of future geologists.-J. B.]

THE stones at Easton-Piers are full of small cockles no bigger than silver half-pennies. The stones at Kington St. Michael and Dracot Cerne are also cockley, but the cockles at Dracot bigger. Cockleborough, near Chippenham, hath its denomination from the petrified cockles found there in great plenty, and as big as cockles. Sheldon, in the parish of Chippenham, hath its denomination from the petrified shells in the stones there.

At Dracot Cerne there is belemnites, as also at Tytherington Lucas.
They are like hafts of knives, dimly transparent, having a seame on
one side.
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West from Highworth, towards Cricklad, are stones as big, or bigger than one's head, that lie common even in the highway, which are petrified sea-mushromes. They looke like honeycombs, but the holes are not hexagons, but round. They are found from Lydiard Tregoze to Cumnor in Barkshire, in which field I have also seen them. [See page 9.-J. B.] ___________________________________

At Steeple Ashton are frequently found stones resembling the picture of the unicorne's horn, but not tapering. They are about the bignesse of a cart-rope, and are of a reddish gray colour.

In the vicaridge garden at Bower Chalke are found petrified oyster shells; which the learned Mr. Lancelot Morehouse, who lived there some yeares, assured me: and I am informed since that there are also cockle shells and scalop shells. Also in the parish of Wotton Basset are found petrified oyster shells; and there are also found cornua ammonis of a reddish gray, but not very large. About two or three miles from the Devises are found in a pitt snake-stones (cornua ammonis) no bigger than a sixpence, of a black colour. Mr. John Beaumont, Junr., of Somersetshire, a great naturalist, tells me that some-where by Chilmarke lies in the chalke a bed of stones called "echini marini". He also enformes me that, east of Bitteston, in the estate of Mr. Montjoy, is a spring,-they call it a holy well,-where five-pointed stones doe bubble up (Astreites) which doe move in vinegar.

At Broad Chalke are sometimes found cornua ammonis of chalke. I doe believe that they might be heretofore in as great abundance hereabout as they are about Caynsham and Burnet in Somersetshire; but being soft, the plough teares them in pieces; and the sun and the frost does slake them like lime. They are very common about West Lavington, with which the right honourable James, Earle of Abington, has adorned his grotto's there. There are also some of these stones about Calne.

CHAPTER VIII. AN HYPOTHESIS OF THE TERRAQUEOUS GLOBE. A DIGRESSION.

[THE seventeenth century was peculiarly an age of scientific research and investigation. The substantial and brilliant discoveries of Newton induced many of his less gifted contemporaries to pursue inquiries into the arcana and profound mysteries of science; but where rational inferences and deductions failed, they too frequently had recourse to mere unsupported theory and conjectural speculation.

The stratification of the crust of our globe, and the division of its surface into land and water, was a fertile theme for conjecture; and many learned and otherwise sagacious writers, assigned imaginary causes for the results which they attempted to explain.

The chapter of Aubrey's work which bears the above title is, to some extent, of this nature. It consists chiefly of speculative opinions extracted from other works, with a few conjectures of his own, which, though based upon the clear and judicious views of his friend Robert Hooke, do not, upon the whole, deserve much consideration; although to the curious in the history of Geological science they may appear interesting. Its author had sufficient diffidence as to the merits of this chapter to describe it as "a digression; ad mentem Mr. R. Hook, R.S.S."; and his friend Ray, in a letter already quoted, observes, after commending other portions of the present work, "I find but one thing that may give any just offence; and that is, the Hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe; wherewith I must confess myself not to be satisfied: but that is but a digression, and aliene from your subject; and so may very well be left out". Ray's work on "Chaos and Creation" published in 1692, a year after the date of this letter, was a valuable contribution to the geological knowledge of the time. Some notes by Evelyn, on Aubrey's original MS., shew that he was at least equally credulous with the author.

Aubrey concludes that the universal occurrence of "petrified fishes' shells gives clear evidence that the earth hath been all covered over with water". He assumes that the irregularities and changes in the earth's surface were occasioned by earthquakes; and has inserted in his manuscript, from the London Gazette, accounts of three earthquakes, in different parts of Italy, in the years 1688 and 1690. A small 4to pamphlet, being "A true relation of the terrible Earthquake which happened at Ragusa, and several other cities in Dalmatia and Albania, the 6th of April 1667", is also inserted in the MS. Aubrey observes: "As the world was torne by earthquakes, as also the vaulture by time foundred and fell in, so the water subsided and the dry land appeared. Then, why might not that change alter the center of gravity of the earth? Before this the pole of the ecliptique perhaps was the pole of the world". And in confirmation of these views he quotes several passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses, book i. fab. 7. 8. He also cites the scheme of Father Kircher, of the Society of Jesus, which, in a section of the globe, represents it as "full of cavities, and resembling the inside of a pomegranade", the centre being marked with a blazing fire, or "ignis centralis". "But now", writes Aubrey in 1691, "Mr. Edmund Halley, R.S.S., hath an hypothesis that the earth is hollow, about five hundred miles thick; and that a terella moves within it, which causes the variation of the needle; and in the center a sun". Further on he says, "that the centre of this globe is like the heart that warmes the body, is now the most commonly received opinion". On the subject of subterranean heats and fires the author quotes several pages from Dr. Edward Jorden's "Discourse of Natural Baths and Mineral Waters; wherein the original of fountains, the nature and differences of water, and particularly those of the Bathe, are declared". (4to. 1632.) He also extracts a passage from Lemery's "Course of Chymistry", (8vo. 1686,) as the foundation of a theory to explain the heat of the Bath waters.

The difficulty of reconciling the various opinions that were advanced with the Mosaic account of the Creation, was a great stumbling-block to the progress of geological science at the time when Aubrey wrote. He was not however inclined to read the sacred writings too literally on this subject, for after giving a part of the first chapter of Genesis, he quotes (from Timothy, ch. iii. v. 15) the words, "from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation:" upon which he observes, "the Apostle doth not say, to teach natural philosophy: and see Pere Symond, where he says that the scriptures in some places may be erroneous as to philosophy, but the doctrine of the church is right". It is presumed that the above passages, which indicate the general nature of Aubrey's theory, will be sufficient, without further quotations from this chapter. - J. B.]

CHAPTER IX. OF PLANTS.

Præsentemq{ue} refert quaelibet herba Deum.- OVID.

[THIS is one of the most copious chapters in Aubrey's work. Ray has appended a number of valuable notes to it, several of which are here printed. Dr. Maton has quoted from this chapter, which he mentions in terms of commendation, in his "Notices of animals and plants of that part of the county of Wilts within 10 miles round Salisbury", appended to Hatcher's History of Salisbury, folio, 1843.-J. B.]

IT were to be wish't that we had a survey or inventory of the plants of every county in England and Wales, as there is of Cambridgeshire by Mr. John Ray; that we might know our own store, and whither to repaire for them for medicinall uses. God Almighty hath furnished us with plants to cure us, that grow perhaps within five or ten miles of our abodes, and we know it not.

Experience hath taught us that some plants have wonderful vertues; and no doubt all have so, if we knew it or could discover it. Homer writes sublimely, and calls them {Gk: Cheires Theion}, the hands of the gods: and we ought to reach them religiously, with praise and thanksgiving.

I am no botanist myselfe, and I thinke we have very few in our countrey that are; the more is the pity. But had Tho. Willisel* lived, and been in England, I would have employed him in this search.

* THOMAS WILLISEL was a Northamptonshire man (Lancashire - J. RAY), a very poor fellow, and was a foot soldier in ye army of Oliver Cromwell. Lying at St. James's (a garrison then I thinke), he happened to go along with some simplers. He liked it so well that he desired to goe with them as often as they went, and tooke such a fancy to it that in a short time he became a good botanist. He was a lusty fellow, and had an admirable sight, which is of great use for a simpler; was as hardy as a Highlander; all the clothes on his back not worth ten groates, an excellent marksman, and would maintain himselfe with his dog and his gun, and his fishing-line. The botanists of London did much encourage him, and employed (sent) him all over England, Scotland, and good part of Ireland, if not all; where he made brave discoveries, for which his name will ever be remembred in herballs. If he saw a strange fowle or bird, or a fish, he would have it and case it. When ye Lord John Vaughan, now Earle of Carbery, was made Governour of Jamaica, 167-, I did recommend him to his Excellency, who made him his gardiner there. He dyed within a yeare after his being there, but had made a fine collection of plants and shells, which the Earle of Carbery hath by him; and had he lived he would have given the world an account of the plants, animals, and fishes of that island. He could write a hand indifferent legible, and had made himself master of all the Latine names: he pourtrayed but untowardly. All the profession he had was to make pegges for shoes.

Sir William Petty surveyed the kingdome of Ireland geographically, by those that knew not what they did. Why were it impossible to procure a botanique survey of Wiltshire by apothecaries of severall quarters of the county? Their profession leadeth them to an acquaintance of herbes, and the taske being divided, would not be very troublesome; and, besides the pleasure, would be of great use. The apothecaries of Highworth, Malmesbury, Calne, and Bath (which is within three miles of Wilts) might give an account of the northern part of Wiltshire, which abounds with rare simples: the apothecaries of Warminster, the Devises, and Marleborough, the midland part; and the apothecaries of Salisbury the south part, towards the New Forest.

Mr. Hayward, the apothecary of Calne, is an ingenious person and a good botanist; and there-about is great variety of earths and plants. He is my friend, and eagerly espouses this designe. He was bred in Salisbury, and hath an interest with the apothecaries there, and very likely at Bath also. I had a good interest with two very able apothecaries in Salisbury: Hen. Denny (Mr. Hayward's master), and Mr. Eires; but they are not long since dead. But Mr. Andrewes, on the ditch there, hath assured a friend of mine, Robt. Good, M.A. that he will preserve the herbes the herbe-women shall bring him, for my use.

If such an inventory were made it would sett our countrey-men a worke, to make 'em love this knowledge, and to make additions.

In the meantime, that this necessary topick be not altogether void, I will sett down such plants as I remember to have seen in my frequent journeys. 'Twas pleasant to behold how every ten or twenty miles yield a new entertainment in this kind.

I will begin in the north part, towardes Coteswold in Gloucestershire.

In Bradon Forest growes very plentifully rank wood-wax; and a blew grasse they call July-flower grasse, which cutts the sheepes mouthes; except in the spring. (I suppose it is that sort of Cyperus grasse which some herbarists call "gramen caryophylleu{s}".- J. RAY.) Wood- wax growes also plentifully between Easton-Piers and Yatton Keynel; but not so rank as at Bradon Forest. ___________________________________

At Mintie is an abundance of wild mint, from whence the village is denominated. ___________________________________

Argentina (wild tansey) growes the most in the fallowes in Coteswold, and North Wilts adjoyning, that I ever saw. It growes also in the fallowes in South Wiltshire, but not so much. (Argentina grows for ye most part in places that are moist underneath, or where water stagnates in winter time. - J. RAY.) ___________________________________

About Priory St. Maries, and in the Minchin-meadowes* there, but especially at Brown's-hill, which is opposite to the house where, in an unfortunate hour,† I drew my first breath, there is infinite variety of plants; and it would have tempted me to have been a botanist had I had leisure, which is a jewell I could be never master of. In the banks of the rivulet growes abundantly maiden-haire (adiantum capillas veneris), harts-tongue, phyllitis, brooke-lime (anagallis aquatica), &c. cowslip (arthritica) and primroses (primula veris) not inferior to Primrose Hills. In this ground calver-keys, hare-parsely, wild vetch, maiden's-honesty, polypodium, fox-gloves, wild-vine, bayle. Here is wonderfull plenty of wild saffron, carthamus, and many vulnerary plants, now by me forgott. There growes also adder's-tongue, plenty - q. if it is not the same with viper's-tongue? (We have no true black mayden-hair growing in England. That which passeth under that name in our apothecaries' shops, and is used as its succeedaneum, is trichomores. Calver-keys, hare's-parseley, mayden's-honesty, are countrey names unknown to me. Carthamus growes no where wild with us. It may possibly be sown in ye fields, as I have seen it in Germany.-J. RAY.)

* Minchin is an old word for a nunne.

† Vide my Villa. "Quoque loco primum tibi sum male cognitus infans".
In Natalem, Ovid. Trist. lib. iii.

This north part of the shire is very naturall for barley. Till the beginning of the civill warrs wheat was rarely sown hereabout; and the brown bread was barley: now all the servants and poor people eat wheaten bread. ___________________________________

Strawberries (fragaria), in Colern woods, exceeding plentifull; the earth is not above two inches above the free-stone. The poor children gather them, and sell them to Bathe; but they kill the young ashes, by barking them to make boxes to put them in.

Strawberries have a most delicious taste, and are so innocent that a woman in childbed, or one in a feaver, may safely eate them: but I have heard Sir Christopher Wren affirm, that if one that has a wound in his head eates them, they are mortall. Methinks 'tis very strange. Quaere, the learned of this? ___________________________________

About Totnam-well is a world of yellow weed (q. nomen) which the diers use for the first tinge for scarlet; and afterwards they use cutchonele. ___________________________________

Bitter-sweet (dulcamara), with a small blew flower, plenty at Box.
(And Market Lavington, in the withy-bed belonging to the vicarage.-
BISHOP TANNER.)

Ferne (filix); the largest and rankest growes in Malmesbury hundred: but the biggest and tallest that ever I saw is in the parke at Draycot Cerne, as high almost as a man on horseback, on an ordinary horse.

"The forest of Savernake is of great note for plenty of game, and for a kind of ferne there that yieldeth a most pleasant savour".-(Fuller's Worthies: Wilts, Hen. Sturmy.)

This ferne is mentioned by Dr. Peter Heylin in his Church History, in the Pedegre of Seymour. The vicar of Great Bedwin told me that he hath seen and smelt the ferne, and that it is like other ferne, but not so big. He knowes not where it growes, but promised to make enquirie. Now Mr. Perkins sayes that this is sweet cis, and that it is also found in the New Forest; but me thinkes the word Savernake seems to be a sweet- oke-ferne: - oke, is oake; verne is ferne; perhaps sa, or sav, is sweet or savorous. - (Vide Phytologia Britannic., where this fern is taken notice of. Sweet fern is the vulgar name, for sweet chervill or cicely; but I never found that plant wild in England.-J. RAY.)

Danes-blood (ebulis) about Slaughtonford is plenty. There was heretofore (vide J. Milton) a great fight with the Danes, which made the inhabitants give it that name.

Wormewood exceedingly plentifull in all the wast grounds in and about Kington St. Michael, Hullavington, and so to Colerne, and great part of the hundred of Malmesbury.

Horse-taile (equisetum). Watchmakers and fine workers in brasse use it after smooth filing. They have it from Holland; but about Dracot Cerne and Kington St. Michael, in the minchin-meadow of Priory St. Maries, is great quantity of the same. It growes four and five foot high.

Coleworts, or kale, the common western dish, was the Saxon physic. In the east it is so little esteemed that the poor people will not eate it.

About Malmesbury "ros solis", which the strong-water men there doe distill, and make good quantitys of it. In the woods about the Devises growes Solomon's-seale; also goates-rue (gallega); as also that admirable plant, lilly-convally. Mr. Meverell says the flowers of the lilly-convally about Mosco are little white flowers.-(Goat's-rue:- I suspect this to be a mistake; for I never yet heard that goat's-rue was found by any man growing wild in England.-J. RAY.)

The middle part of Wilts.- Naked-boys (q. if not wild saffron) about Stocton. (Naked-boys is, I suppose, meadow saffron, or colchicum, for I doe not remember ever to have seen any other sort of saffron growing wild in England. - J. RAY.) ___________________________________

The watered meadows all along from Marleborough to Hungerford, Ramesbury, and Littlecot, at the later end of Aprill, are yellow with butter flowers. When you come to Twyford the floted meadowes there are all white with little flowers, which I believe are ladysmocks (cardamine): quaere of some herbalist the right name of that plant. (Ranunculus aquaticus folio integro et multum diviso, C. Bankini.- J. RAY.) The graziers told me that the yellow meadowes are by much the better, and those white flowers are produc't by a cold hungry water. ___________________________________

South part. - At the east end of Ebbesbourne Wake is a meadowe called Ebbesbourne, that beareth grasse eighteen foot long. I myself have seen it of thirteen foot long; it is watered with the washing of the village. Upon a wager in King James the First's time, with washing it more than usuall, the grasse was eighteen foot long. It is so sweet that the pigges will eate it; it growes no higher than other grasse, but with knotts and harles, like a skeen of silke (or setts together). They cannot mowe it with a sythe, but they cutt it with such a hooke as they bagge pease with.

At Orston [Orcheston] St. Maries is a meadowe of the nature of that at Ebbesbourne aforesayd, which beares a sort of very long grasse. Of this grasse there was presented to King James the First some that were seventeen foot long: here is only one acre and a half of it. In common yeares it is 12 or 13 foot long. It is a sort of knott grasse, and the pigges will eate it.

[The "Orcheston Grass" has long been famous as one of the most singular vegetable products of this country. From the time of Fuller, who particularly mentions it in his "Worthies of England", many varying and exaggerated accounts of it have been published: but in the year 1798 Dr. Maton carefully examined the grass, and fully investigated the peculiar circumstances of soil and locality which tend to its production. He contributed the result of his inquiries to the Linnæan Society, in a paper which is printed in the fifth volume of their Transactions. Some comments on that paper, and on the subject generally, by Mr. Davis, of Longleat, will be found in the second volume of the Beauties of Wiltshire, p. 79. That gentleman states that "its extraordinary length is produced by the overflowing of the river on a warm gravelly bed, which disposes the grass to take root and shoot out from the joints, and then root again, and thus again and again; so that it is frequently of the length of ten or twelve feet and the quantity on the land immense, although it does not stand above two feet high from the ground". Although the meadow at Orcheston St. Mary in which this grass grows is only two acres and a half in extent, its produce in a favourable season, is said to have exceeded twelve tons of hay. Shakspere, to whom all natural and rural objects were familiar, alludes to the "hindering knot-grass", in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. sc. 2. ___________________________________

Ramsons (allium ursinum, fl. albo): tast like garlick: they grow much in Cranbourn Chace. A proverb: -

"Eate leekes in Lide,* and ramsins in May,
And all the yeare after physitians may play".

* March.

[I have seen this old proverb printed, "Eat leekes in Lent, and raisins in May, &c." - J. B.]

No wild oates in Wiltshire, or rarely. In Somersetshire, common. (There is abundance of wild oats in the middle part of Wiltsh., especially in the west clay of Market Lavington field, when the crop is barley. - BISHOP TANNER.) ___________________________________

Thorowax beares a pretty little yellow flower, not much unlike the blowing of a furze that growes so common on the downes, close to the ground: the bees love it extremely. (There is a mistake in thorowax, or perfoliata; for that rises to a good stature, and hath no such flower. I suppose the plant you mean is trifolium corniculatum, or bird's-foot trefoil.-J. RAY.) ___________________________________

The right honorable James, Earle of Abingdon, tells me that there are plenty of morillons about Lavingtons, which he eates, and sends to London. Methinkes 'tis a kind of ugly mushroom. Morillons we have from Germany and other places beyond sea, which are sold here at a deare rate; the outer side is like a honeycombe. I have seen them of nine inches about They grow near the rootes of elmes.

Poppy (papaver) is common in the corn fields; but the hill above Harnham, by Salisbury, appeares a most glorious scarlet, it is so thick there.

"Ilia soporiferum, parvas initura penates,
Colligit agresti lene papaver humo.
Dum legit oblito fertur gustàsse palato,
Longamq{ue} imprudens exsoluisse famem". - OVID. FAST. lib. iv.
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In a ground of mine called Swices (which is a neck of land at the upper end of the field called Shatcomb) growes abundantly a plant called by the people hereabout crow-bells, which I never saw any where but there. "Swice", in the old English, signifies a neck. ___________________________________

Dwarfe-elder (ebulus) at Box, &c. common enough: at Falston and Stoke Verdon, in the high waies. The juice of ebulus turnes haire black; and being mingled with bull's fatt is Dr. Buller's remedie for the gowte.

The best way to dye haire browne is to take alhanna in powder, mix't with fair water as thick as mustard: lay it on the haire, and so tye it up in a napkin for twelve houres time. Doe thus for six dayes together, putting on fresh every day for that time. This will keep the haire browne for one whole yeares time after it. The alhanna does prepare the hair and makes it of a darke red or tawny colour. Then they take "takout", which is like a small gall, and boyle it in oyle till it hath drunk up all the oyle; then pulverize it, and mix it with water and putt it on the haire. Grind a very little of alkohol, which they use in glazeing of their earthen vessels, in a mortar with the takout, and this turnes the haire to a perfect black. This receipt I had from my worthy and obligeing friend Mr. Wyld Clarke, merchant, of London, who was factour many yeares at S{an}cta-Cruce, in Barberie, and brought over a quantity of these leaves for his own use and his friends. 'Tis pity it is not more known. 'Tis leaves of a tree like a berbery leafe. Mr. Clarke hath yet by him (1690) above half a peck of the alhanna.

Dr. Edw. Brown, M.D. in his Travells, sc. description of Larissa and Thessalie, speakes of alhanna. Mr. Wyld Clarke assures me that juice of lemons mixt with alhanna strikes a deeper and more durable colour either in the hands or nailes. ___________________________________

Tobacco. - We have it onely in gardens for medicine; but in the neighbouring county of Gloucester it is a great commodity. Mdm. "Tobacco was first brought into England by Ralph Lane in the eight and twentieth yeare of Queen Elizabeth's raigne". - Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle. Rider's Almanack (1682) sayes since tobacco was first brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh, 99 yeares. Mr. Michael Weekes, of the custome house, assures me that the custom of tobacco is the greatest of all other, and amounts now (1688) to four hundred thousand pounds per annum. [Now (1847) about three millions and a half.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Broome keeps sheep from the rott, and is a medicine not long since found out by physitians for the dropsy. In some places I knew carefull husbandmen that quite destroyed their broome (as at Lanford), and afterwards their sheep died of the rott, from which they were free before the broom was cutt down; so ever since they doe leave a border of broome about their grounds for their sheep to browze on, to keep them sound. ___________________________________

Furzes (genista spinosa).-I never saw taller or more flourishing English furzes than at Chalke. The Great Duke of Thuscany carried furzes out of England for a rarity in his magnificent garden. I never saw such dwarft furzes as at Bowdon parke; they did but just peep above the ground. ___________________________________

Oakes (the best of trees).-We had great plenty before the disafforestations. We had in North Wiltshire, and yet have, though not in the former plenty, as good oakes as any in England. The best that we have now (1670) are at Okesey Parke, Sir Edward Poole's, in Malmesbury hundred; and the oakes at Easton Piers (once mine) were, for the number, not inferior to them. In my great-grandfather Lite's time (15—) one might have driv'n a plough over every oake in the oak- close, which are now grown stately trees. The great oake by the day- house [dairy house - J. B.] is the biggest oake now, I believe, in all the countie. There is a common wealth of rookes there. When I was a boy the two greatest oakes were, one on the hill at the parke at Dracot Cerne; the other at Mr. Sadler's, at Longley Burrell. 'Twas of one of these trees, I remember, that the trough of the paper mill at Long-deane, in the parish of Yatton Keynell, anno 1636, was made. In Garsden Parke (now the Lord Ferrars) is perhaps the finest hollow oake in England; it is not high, but very capacious, and well wainscotted; with a little table, which I thinke eight may sitt round. When an oake is felling, before it falles, it gives a kind of shreikes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq. hath heard it severall times. This gave the occasion of that expression in Ovid's Metamorph. lib. viii. fab. ii. about Erisichthon's felling of the oake sacred to Ceres:- "gemitumq{ue} dedit decidua quercus".

In a progresse of K. Charles I. in time of peace, three score and ten carts stood under the great oake by Woodhouse. It stands in Sir James Thinne's land. On this oake Sir Fr. D—— hung up thirteen, after quarter. Woodhouse was a garrison for the Parliament. He made a sonn hang his father, or è contra. From the body of this tree to the extreme branches is nineteen paces of Captain Hamden, who cannot pace less than a yard. (Of prodigious trees of this kind you will see many instances in my Sylva, which Mr. Ray has translated and inserted in his Herbal.- J. EVELYN.) ___________________________________

In the New Forest, within the trenches of the castle of Molwood (a Roman camp) is an old oake, which is a pollard and short It putteth forth young leaves on Christmas day, for about a week at that time of the yeare. Old Mr. Hastings, of Woodlands, was wont to send a basket full of them every yeare to King Charles I. I have seen of them severall Christmasses brought to my father.

But Mr. Perkins, who lives in the New Forest, sayes that there are two other oakes besides that which breed green buddes about Christmas day (pollards also), but not constantly. One is within two leagges of the King's-oake, the other a mile and a halfe off. [Leagges, probably lugs: a lug being "a measure of land, called otherwise a pole or perch". (Bailey's Dictionary.) The context renders leagues improbable.-J. B.] ___________________________________

Elmes.-I never did see an elme that grew spontaneously in a wood, as oakes, ashes, beeches, &c.; which consideration made me reflect that they are exotique; but by whom were they brought into this island? Not by the Saxons; for upon enquiry I am enformed that there are none in Saxony, nor in Denmarke, nor yet in France, spontaneous; but in Italy they are naturall; e. g. in Lombardie, &c. Wherefore I am induced to believe that they were brought hither out of Italy by the Romans, who were cultivators of their colonies. The Saxons understood not nor cared for such improvements, nor had hardly leisure if they would.

Anno 1687 I travelled from London as far as the Bishoprick of Durham. From Stamford to the bishoprick I sawe not one elme on the roade, whereas from London to Stamford they are in every hedge almost. In Yorkshire is plenty of trees, which they call elmes; but they are wich-hazells, as wee call them in Wilts (in some counties wich- elmes). I acquainted Mr. Jo. Ray of this, and he told me when he travelled into the north he minded it not, being chiefly intent on herbes; but he writes the contrary to what I doe here: but it is matter of fact, and therefore easily to bee prov'd. [See Ray's Letter to Aubrey, ante, p. 8.] "Omnesq{ue}, radicum plantis proveniunt". - Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 17.

In the Villare Anglicanum are a great many towns, called Ash-ton,
Willough-by, &c. but not above three or four Elme-tons.

In the common at Urshfont was a mighty elme, which was blown down by the great wind when Ol. Cromwell died. I sawe it as it lay along, and I could but just looke over it. [See note in page 14.-J. B.] ___________________________________

Since the writing this of elmes, Edmund Wyld, Esq. of Houghton Conquest in Bedfordshire, R.S.S. assures me that in Bedfordshire, in severall woods, e. g. about Wotton, &c. that elmes doe grow naturally, as ashes, beeches, &c.; but quaere, what kind of elm it is? ___________________________________

Beeches.-None in Wilts except at Groveley. (In the wood belonging to Mr. Samwell's farm at Market Lavington are three very large beeches.- BISHOP TANNER.) I have a conceit that long time ago Salisbury plaines might have woods of them, but that they cut them down as an incumbrance to the ground, which would turn to better profit by pasture and arable. The Chiltern of Buckinghamshire is much of the like soile; and there the neernesse of Bucks to London, with the benefit of the Thames, makes their woods a very profitable commodity. ___________________________________

About the middle of Groveley Forest was a fair wood of oakes, which was called Sturton's Hatt. It appeared a good deale higher than the rest of the forest (which was most coppice wood), and was seen over all Salisbury plaines. In the middle of this hatt of trees (it resembled a hatt) there was a tall beech, which overtopt all the rest. The hatt was cutt down by Philip II. Earle of Pembroke, 1654; and Thomas, Earle of Pembroke, disafforested it, an°. 1684. ___________________________________

Birch. - Wee have none in North Wilts, but some (no great plenty) in South Wilts: most by the New Forest (In the parish of Market Lavington is a pretty large coppice, which consists for the most part of birch; and from thence it is well known by the name of the Birchen coppice.- BISHOP TANNER.) ___________________________________

In the parish of Hilmerton, in the way from Calne, eastward, leaving Hilmerton on the left hand, grows a red withy on the ditch side by the gate, 10 feet 6 inches about; and the spreading of the boughs is seaven yards round from the body of the tree. ___________________________________

Wich-hazel in the hundred of Malmesbury and thereabout, spontaneous. There are two vast wich-hazel trees in Okesey Parke, not much lesse than one of the best oakes there.

At Dunhed St. Maries, at the crosse, is a wich-hazell not lesse worthy of remarque than Magdalene-College oake (mentioned by Dr. Rob. Plott), for the large circumference of the shadowe that it causeth. When I was a boy the bowyers did use them to make bowes, and they are next best to yew. ___________________________________

Hornbeam we have none; neither did I ever see but one in the west of
England, and that at Bathwick, juxta Bath, in the court yard of Hen.
Nevill, Esq.
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Yew trees naturally grow in chalkie countrys. The greatest plenty of them, as I believe, in the west of England is at Nunton Ewetrees. Between Knighton Ashes and Downton the ground produces them all along; but at Nunton they are a wood. At Ewridge, in the parish of Colern, in North Wilts (a stone brash and a free stone), they also grow indifferently plentifull; and in the parish of Kington St Michael I remember three or four in the stone brash and red earth.

When I learnt my accidents, 1633, at Yatton Keynel, there was a fair and spreading ewe-tree in the churchyard, as was common heretofore. The boyes tooke much delight in its shade, and it furnish't them with their scoopes and nutt-crackers. The clarke lop't it to make money of it to some bowyer or fletcher, and that lopping kill'd it: the dead trunke remaines there still. (Eugh-trees grow wild about Winterslow. A great eugh-tree in North Bradley churchyard, planted, as the tradition goes, in the time of ye Conquest. Another in …. Cannings churchyard. Leland (Itinerary) observes that in his time there was thirty-nine vast eugh-trees in the churchyard belonging to Stratfleur Abbey, in Wales.-BISHOP TANNER. Abundance of ewgh-trees in Surrey, upon the downes, heretofore, thô now much diminished.-J. EVELYN.) ___________________________________

Box, a parish so called in North Wilts, neer Bathe, in which parish is our famous freestone quarre of Haselbery: in all probability tooke its name from the box-trees which grew there naturally, but now worne out.

Not far off on Coteswold in Gloucestershire is a village called Boxwell, where is a great wood of it, which once in …. yeares Mr. Huntley fells, and sells to the combe-makers in London. At Boxley in Kent, and at Boxhill in Surrey, bothe chalkie soiles, are great box woods, to which the combe-makers resort. ___________________________________

Holy is indifferently common in Malmesbury hundred, and also on the borders of the New Forest: it seemes to indicate pitt-coale. In Wardour Parke are holy-trees that beare yellow berries. I think I have seen the like in Cranborne Chase. ___________________________________

Hazel.- Wee have two sorts of them. In the south part, and particularly Cranbourn Chase, the hazells are white and tough; with which there are made the best hurdles of England. The nutts of the chase are of great note, and are sold yearly beyond sea. They sell them at Woodbery Hill Faire, &c.; and the price of them is the price of a buschell of wheate. The hazell-trees in North Wilts are red, and not so tough, more brittle. ___________________________________

Coven-tree common about Chalke and Cranbourn Chase: the carters doe make their whippes of it. It growes no higher than a cherry-tree. ___________________________________

Buckthorne very common in South Wiltshire. The apothecaries make great use of the berries, and the glovers use it to colour their leather yellow. ___________________________________

Prick-timber (euonymus).- This tree is common, especially in North Wilts. The butchers doe make skewers of it, because it doth not taint the meate as other wood will doe: from whence it hath the name of prick-timber. ___________________________________

Osiers.- Wee have great plenty of them about Bemarton, &c. near Salisbury, where the osier beds doe yield four pounds per acre. ___________________________________

Service-trees grow naturally in Grettwood, in the parish of Gretenham, belonging to George Ayliffe, Esq. In the parke of Kington St. Michel is onely one. At the foot of Hedington Hill, and also at the bottome of the hill at Whitesheet, which is the same range of hill, doe growe at least twenty cervise-trees. They operate as medlars, but less effectually.

Pliny, lib. xv. c. 21. "De Sorbis. Quartum genus torminale appellatur, remedio tantum probabile, assiduum proventu minimumq{ue} pomo, arbore dissimili foliis plane platani". Lib. xvi. cap. 18.- "Gaudet frigidis Sorbus sed magis betulla". Dr. Gale, R.S.S. tells me that "Sorbiodunum", now Old Sarum, has its denomination from "sorbes"; but the ground now below the castle is all turned to arable. ___________________________________

Elders grow every where. At Bradford the side of the high hill which faces the south, about Mr. Paul Methwin's house, is covered with them. I fancy that that pent might be turned to better profit, for it is situated as well for a vinyard as any place can be, and is on a rocky gravelly ground. The apothecaries well know the use of the berries, and so doe the vintners, who buy vast quantities of them in London, and some doe make no inconsiderable profit by the sale of them. ___________________________________

At the parsonage house at Wyley growes an ash out of the mortar of the wall of the house, and it flourishes very well and is verdant. It was nine yeares old in 1686. I doe not insert this as a rarity; but 'tis strange to consider that it hath its growth and nourishment from the aire, for from the lime it can receive none. [In August 1847, I observed a large and venerable ash tree growing out of and united with the ancient Roman walls of Caistor, near Norwich. The whole of the base of the trunk was incorporated with bricks, rubble, and mortar; but the roots no doubt extended many yards into the adjacent soil.- J. B.] ___________________________________

Whitty-tree, or wayfaring-tree, is rare in this country; some few in Cranbourn Chace, and three or four on the south downe of the farme of Broad Chalke. In Herefordshire they are not uncommon; and they used, when I was a boy, to make pinnes for the yoakes of their oxen of them, believing it had vertue to preserve them from being forespoken, as they call it; and they use to plant one by their dwelling-house, believing it to preserve from witches and evill eyes. ___________________________________

Mr. Anthony Hinton, one of the officers of the Earle of Pembroke, did inoculate, not long before the late civill warres (ten yeares or more), a bud of Glastonbury Thorne, on a thorne at his farm-house at Wilton, which blossomes at Christmas as the other did. My mother has had branches of them for a flower-pott severall Christmasses, which I have seen. Elias Ashmole, Esq., in his notes upon "Theatrum Chymicum", saies that in the churchyard at Glastonbury grew a wallnutt tree that did putt out young leaves at Christmas, as doth the king's oake in the New Forest. In Parham Parke, in Suffolk (Mr. Boutele's), is a pretty ancient thorne that blossomes like that at Glastonbury; the people flock thither to see it on Christmas-day. But in the rode that leades from Worcester to Droitwiche is a blackthorne hedge at Clayn, halfe a mile long or more, that blossomes about Christmas-day for a week or more together. The ground is called Longland. Dr. Ezerel Tong sayd that about Runnly-marsh, in Kent, [Romney-marsh?] are thornes naturally like that at Glastonbury. The souldiers did cutt downe that neer Glastonbury: the stump remaines. ___________________________________

In the parish of Calne, at a pleasant seat of the Blakes, called
Pinhill, was a grove of pines, which gives the name to the seate.
About 1656 there were remaining about four or five: they made fine
shew on the hill.
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In the old hedges which are the boundes between the lands of Priory St. Marie, juxta Kington St. Michael, and the west field, which belonged to the Lord Abbot of Glastonbury, are yet remaining a great number of berberry-trees, which I suppose the nunnes made use of for confections, and they taught the young ladies that were educated there such arts. In those days there were not schooles for young ladies as now, but they were educated at religious houses.

CHAPTER X. BEASTES.

[THIS Chapter, with the three which follow it, on "Fishes", "Birds", and "Reptils and Insects", constitute a principal branch of the work. On these topics Aubrey was assisted by his friend Sir James Long, of Draycot, Bart., whose letters to him are inserted in the original manuscript. Besides the passages here given, the chapter on "Beastes" comprises some extracts from Dame Juliana Berners' famous "Treatyse on Hawkynge, Hunting, and Fisshynge" (1481); together with a minute account of a sculptured representation of hunting the wild boar, over a Norman doorway at Little Langford Church. This bas-relief is engraved in Hoare's Modern Wiltshire. - J. B.]

I WILL first begin with beastes of venerie, whereof there hath been great plenty in this countie, and as good as any in England. Mr. J. Speed, who wrote the description of Wiltshire, anno Domini [1611], reckons nine forests, one chace, and twenty-nine parkes.

This whole island was anciently one great forest. A stagge might have raunged from Bradon Forest to the New Forest; sc. from forest to forest, and not above four or five miles intervall (sc. from Bradon Forest to Grettenham and Clockwoods; thence to the forest by Boughwood-parke, by Calne and Pewsham Forest, Blackmore Forest, Gillingham Forest, Cranbourn Chase, Holt Forest, to the New Forest.) Most of those forests were given away by King James the First. Pewsham Forest was given to the Duke of Buckingham, who gave it, I thinke, to his brother, the Earle of Anglesey. Upon the disafforesting of it, the poor people made this rhythme:-

"When Chipnam stood in Pewsham's wood,
Before it was destroy'd,
A cow might have gone for a groat a yeare-
but now it is denyed".

The metre is lamentable; but the cry of the poor was more lamentable. I knew severall that did remember the going of a cowe for 4d. per annum. The order was, how many they could winter they might summer: and pigges did cost nothing the going. Now the highwayes are encombred with cottages, and the travellers with the beggars that dwell in them. ___________________________________

The deer of the forest of Groveley were the largest of fallow deer in England, but some doe affirm the deer of Cranborne Chase to be larger than Groveley. Quaere Mr. Francis Wroughton of Wilton concerning the weight of the deer; as also Jack Harris, now keeper of Bere Forest, can tell the weight of the best deere of Verneditch and Groveley: he uses to come to the inne at Sutton. Verneditch is in the parish of Broad Chalke. 'Tis agreed that Groveley deer were generally the heaviest; but there was one, a buck, killed at Verneditch about an°. 165-, that out-weighed Groveley by two pounds. Dr. Randal Caldicot told me that it was weighed at his house, and it weighed eight score pounds. About the yeare 1650 there were in Verneditch-walke, which is a part of Cranborne Chase, a thousand or twelve hundred fallow deere; and now, 1689, there are not above five hundred. A glover at Tysbury will give sixpence more for a buckskin of Cranborne Chase than of Groveley; and he saies that he can afford it. ___________________________________

Clarendon Parke was the best parke in the King's dominions. Hunt and Palmer, keepers there, did averre that they knew seven thousand head of deere in that parke; all fallow deere. This parke was seven miles about. Here were twenty coppices, and every one a mile round. ___________________________________

Upon these disafforestations the marterns were utterly destroyed in North Wilts. It is a pretty little beast and of a deep chesnutt colour, a kind of polecat, lesse than a fox; and the furre is much esteemed: not much inferior to sables. It is the richest furre of our nation. Martial saies of it -

"Venator capta marte superbus adest". - Epigr.

In Cranborn Chase and at Vernditch are some marterns still remaining. ___________________________________

In Wiley river are otters, and perhaps in others. The otter is our English bever; and Mr. Meredith Lloyd saies that in the river Tivy in Carmarthenshire there were real bevers heretofore - now extinct. Dr. Powell, in his History of Wales, speakes of it. They are both alike; fine furred, and their tayles like a fish. (The otter hath a hairy round tail, not like the beavers. - J. RAY.) ___________________________________

I come now to warrens. That at Auburn is our famous coney-warren; and the conies there are the best, sweetest, and fattest of any in England; a short, thick coney, and exceeding fatt The grasse there is very short, and burnt up in the hot weather. 'Tis a saying, that conies doe love rost-meat. ___________________________________

Mr. Wace's notes, p. 62.- "We have no wild boares in England: yet it may be thought that heretofore we had, and did not think it convenient to preserve this game". But King Charles I. sent for some out of France, and putt them in the New Forest, where they much encreased, and became terrible to the travellers. In the civill warres they were destroyed, but they have tainted all the breed of the pigges of the neighbouring partes, which are of their colour; a kind of soot colour.

(There were wild boars in a forest in Essex formerly. I sent a Portugal boar and sow to Wotton in Surrey, which greatly increased; but they digged the earth so up, and did such spoyle, that the country would not endure it: but they made incomparable bacon.- J. EVELYN.) ___________________________________

In warrens are found, but rarely, some old stotes, quite white: that is, they are ermins. My keeper of Vernditch warren hath shewn two or three of them to me.

At Everley is a great warren for hares; and also in Bishopston parish neer Wilton is another, where the standing is to see the race; and an°. 1682 the Right Honble James, Earle of Abingdon, made another at West Lavington. ___________________________________

Having done now with beastes of venerum, I will come to dogges. The British dogges were in great esteeme in the time of the Romans; as appeares by Gratius, who lived in Augustus Caesar's time, and Oppian, who wrote about two ages after Gratius, in imitation of him. "Gratii Cynegeticon", translated by Mr. Chr. Wace, 1654:-

"What if the Belgique current you should view,
And steer your course to Britain's utmost shore'!
Though not for shape, and much deceiving show,
The British hounds no other blemish know:
When fierce work comes, and courage must he shown,
And Mars to extreme combat leads them on,
Then stout Molossians you will lesse commend;
With Athemaneans these in craft contend."
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It is certain that no county of England had greater variety of game, &c. than Wiltshire, and our county hounds were as good, or rather the best of England; but within this last century the breed is much mix't with northern hounds. Sir Charles Snell, of Kington St. Michael, who was my honoured friend and neighbour, had till the civill warrs as good hounds for the hare as any were in England, for handsomenesse and mouth (deep-mouthed) and goodnesse, and suited one another admirably well. But it was the Right Hon. Philip I. Earle of Pembroke, that was the great hunter. It was in his lordship's time, sc. tempore Jacobi I. and Caroli I. a serene calme of peace, that hunting was at its greatest heighth that ever was in this nation. The Roman governours had not, I thinke, that leisure. The Saxons were never at quiet; and the barons' warres, and those of York and Lancaster, took up the greatest part of the time since the Conquest: so that the glory of the English hunting breath'd its last with this Earle, who deceased about 1644, and shortly after the forests and parkes were sold and converted into arable, &c. 'Twas after his lordship's decease [1650] that I was a hunter; that is to say, with the Right Honourable William, Lord Herbert, of Cardiff, the aforesaid Philip's grandson. Mr. Chr. Wace then taught him Latin, and hunted with him; and 'twas then that he translated Gratii Cynegeticon, and dedicated it to his lordship, which will be a lasting monument for him. Sir Jo. Denham was at Wilton at that time about a twelve moneth. ___________________________________

The Wiltshire greyhounds were also the best of England, and are still; and my father and I have had as good as any were in our times in Wiltshire. They are generally of a fallow colour, or black; but Mr. Button's, of Shirburn in Glocestershire, are some white and some black. But Gratius, in his Cynegeticon, adviseth:-

"And chuse the grayhound py'd with black and white,
He runs more swift than thought, or winged flight;
But courseth yet in view, not hunts in traile,
In which the quick Petronians never faile."

We also had in this county as good tumblers as anywhere in the nation.
Martial speakes of the tumblers:-

"Non sibi sed domino venatur vertagus acer,
Illæsum leporem qui tibi dente feret" -

Turnebus, Young, Gerard, Vossius, and Janus Ulitius, all consenting that the name and dog came together from Gallia Belgica. Dr. Caldicot told me that in Wilton library there was a Latine poeme (a manuscript), wrote about Julius Caesar's time, where was mention of tumblers, and that they were found no where but in Britaine. I ask'd him if 'twas not Gratius; he told me no. Quaere, Mr. Chr. Wace, if he remembers any such thing? The books are now most lost and gonne: perhaps 'twas Martial.

Very good horses for the coach are bought out of the teemes in our hill-countrey. Warminster market is much used upon this account. ___________________________________

I have not seen so many pied cattle any where as in North Wiltshire. The country hereabout is much inclined to pied cattle, but commonly the colour is black or brown, or deep red. Some cow-stealers will make a hole in a hott lofe newly drawn out of the oven, and putt it on an oxes horn for a convenient tune, and then they can turn their softned homes the contrary way, so that the owner cannot swear to his own beast. Not long before the King's restauration a fellow was hanged at Tyburn for this, and say'd that he had never come thither if he had not heard it spoken of in a sermon. Thought he, I will try this trick.