enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of
rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain,
moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself.**
(** This soil produces good wheat and clover.)

Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land,
neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet
kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone, and have their
poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. This white soil
produces the brightest hops.

As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer-forest, at the
juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam,
remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of
Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors,
and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the
freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shakey, and so
brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam
the soil becomes an hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the
forest; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and
turnips.



Letter II
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

In the court of Norton-farmhouse, a manor farm to the north-west
of the village, on the white maims, stood within these twenty years
a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, ulmus folio latissimo scabro of