[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."'
hope Major Stuart Love has found en answer to his query are this. If he has not, he may be glad to see that others are interested in the same point. The sunken roe& are characteristic of all au& part of the front as I have seen where there is a deep loam on a chalk basis. There is often six feet of rich—sugar-beet- hearingsoil before the chalk is reached, and the roads are frequently sunk to fully that depth. On first making their acquaintance I had memories of the sunken roads of Dartmoor, and the explanation commonly given of a furtive primitive folk who shunned the skyline. Then on noticing their extraordinary convenience in warfare I saw in them the evidence of a country- side through many centuries made a battleground. A French officer thought roads were so made to avoid gradients, and an English officer suggested that a thrifty people refused to waste good soil by trampling on it, threw it up on to their fields, and walked and drove on the chalk beneath. As against the French- man's theory and also that of your Athenaeum Club corre- spondent may be adduced the fact that these roads frequently follow exactly the contours of the land they traverse, though, of course, at a lower level. Quite often you will find a sunken road running between two main roads across perfectly level land. This in my humble—that is, subalternate—opinion gives the key to the problem. Plain roads are worth metalling, and so can bear their traffic on the surface; 'third- and fourth-class roads—often ancient tracks—were left unmetalled, and by the wear of generations, helped possibly by the thriftiness of the tillers of the land, sunk to the firm foundation of the chalk. If Major Stuart Love has not already noted that these sunken roads are always of second- rate importance, I think that if he makes further observations along the line of this theory he will find it well substantiated.—
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