Country Life
Two DOWN PICTURES.
A group of people, some practically, some theoretically concerned with farming, stood last week on the Wiltshire Downs looking "on this picture and on that." To begin with "that picture " : the lower stretch of land was empty, had been empty this score of years. It was of little good to man or beast, and not much to bird or insect. It is valued at £4 to 16 freehold, supposing a purchaser could be found. If you put stock on it—a supposition that has no authority in this century, they could not pick up a living. A curious thing happens to untrodden downland of this sort. The grasses form a sort of felt roofing over but almost independent of the soil proper ; and the rain runs through and away, almost as it does on the Nullarbor Plains of Western Australia, where, though rain is not altoaether insufficient, none of it abides long enough to do service. A desert has been created by neglect.
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