This, I Say, I Was Told--I Do Not Affirm It To Be
True; But When I Viewed The Country Round, I Confess I Could Not
But Incline To Believe It.
It is observable of these sheep that they are exceeding fruitful,
the ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they
Are for that reason
bought by all the farmers through the east part of England, who
come to Burford Fair in this country to buy them, and carry them
into Kent and Surrey eastward, and into Buckinghamshire and
Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire north; even our Banstead Downs in
Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is supplied from this place. The
grass or herbage of these downs is full of the sweetest and the
most aromatic plants, such as nourish the sheep to a strange
degree; and the sheep's dung, again, nourishes that herbage to a
strange degree; so that the valleys are rendered extremely fruitful
by the washing of the water in hasty showers from off these hills.
An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire, the
next county to this; for it is the same thing in proportion over
this whole county. I was told that at this town there was a meadow
on the bank of the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury,
which was let for 12 pounds a year per acre for the grass only.
This I inquired particularly after at the place, and was assured by
the inhabitants, as one man, that the fact was true, and was showed
the meadows.
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