Proceedings - Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Volume 22 baixar o livro de graça

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...that are narrow and steep are being perpetually diminished by subaerial denudation, by wash and slip. The edges of the ancient slopes and all that was on them are vanished. The transverse works remain, but are shrunk in proportion to their antiquity, and their present terminations, on either side, are greatly attenuated. Returning to Eggardun, it has now become clear that the transverse ditch, 15oft. beyond the camp, was originally cut, and the earth thrown up along its western margin, to isolate the spur. Long afterwards came the camp-builders, who deepened the ditch and threw up earth along its eastern margin for the purpose of strengthening, though doubtfully, their own fortiftcation. The very ancient and time-wom fosse that Warne speaks of as intersecting, about midway, that portion of the promontory not held by the camp, so far from being midway, is near to the end of the spur. It is indeed the westerly counterpart of the trench just described, and the distance between the two is 44o yards. The pit-circle that Warne mentions as close at hand may have been sunk in later times to protect the warden of beacon fires.f My colleague has reminded me of the geological dictum that chalk downs, covered with turf, are denuded with "colossal slowness." At the foot of such hills gush forth swift and copious streams of water highly charged with lime. As the rain sinks to the springs through the chalk, the latter is perennially dissolved and carried away. The great downs are undergoing an interstitial shrinkage, invisible but perpetual. It may be noted, for what it is worth, that the last surveyors of Dorset assign a much less altitude to the hills than was obtained by the first survey, which perhaps was inaccurate. In 1886, on the edge of a declivity near ...