n faces for building.

This bed of red clay, which renders the country very slippery in the
winter months from October to April, does not cover the sides of the
valleys; these, when ploughed, show the white chalk, which tint shades
away lower in the valley, as insensibly as a colour laid on by a
painter's brush.

Nearly all the land is ploughed, and is often left fallow, which gives
the country a naked red look, or not unfrequently white, from a covering
of chalk laid on by the farmers. Nobody seems at all aware on what
principle fresh chalk laid on land abounding with lime does it any good.
This, however, is said to have been the practice of the country ever
since the period of the Romans, and at present the many white pits on
the hill sides, which so frequently afford a picturesque contrast with
the overhanging yew trees, are all quarried for this purpose.

The number of different kinds of bushes in the hedgerows, entwined
by traveller's joy and the bryonies, is conspicuous compared with the
hedges of the northern counties.

March 25th [1844?].--The first period of vegetation, and the banks are
clothed with pale-blue violets to an extent I have never seen equalled,
and with primroses. A few days later some of the copses were beautifully
enlivened by Ranunculus auricomus, wood anemones, and a white Stellaria.
Again, subsequently, large areas were brilliantly blue with bluebells.
The flowers are here very beautiful, and the number of flowers; [and]
the darkness of the blue of the common little Polygala almost equals it
to an alpine gentian.

There are large tracts of woodland, [cut down] about once every ten
years; some of these enclosures seem to be very ancient. On the south
side of Cudham Wood a beech hedge has grown to Brobdignagian size, with
several of the huge branches crossing each other and firmly grafted
together.

Larks abound here, and their songs sound most agreeably on all sides;
nightingales are common. Judging from an odd cooing note, something like
the purring of a cat, doves are very common in the woods.

June 25th.--The sainfoin fields are now of the most beautiful pink, and
from the number of hive-bees frequenting them the humming noise is quite
extraordinary. This humming is rather deeper than the humming overhead,
which has been continuous and loud during all these last hot days over
almost every field. The labourers here say it is made by "air-bees,"
and one man, seeing a wild bee in a flo