I was overflowing, myself, with bottled-up information on the
subject of those two prehistoric tumuli; for Ogbury Barrows have been
the hobby of my lifetime; but I didn't read a paper upon their origin
and meaning, first, because the secretary very happily forgot to ask me,
and secondly, because I was much better employed in psychological
research into the habits and manners of an extremely pretty
pink-and-white archaeologist who stood beside me. Instead, therefore, of
boring her and my other companions with all my accumulated store of
information about Ogbury Barrows, I locked it up securely in my own
bosom, with the fell design of finally venting it all at once in one
vast flood upon the present article.
Ogbury Barrows, I would have said (had it not been for the praiseworthy
negligence of our esteemed secretary), stand upon the very verge of a
great chalk-down, overlooking a broad and fertile belt of valley, whose
slopes are terraced in the quaintest fashion with long parallel lines of
obviously human and industrial origin. The terracing must have been done
a very long time ago indeed, for it is a device for collecting enough
soil on a chalky hillside to grow corn in. Now, nobody ever tried to
grow corn on open chalk-downs in any civilised period of history until
the present century, because the downs are so much more naturally
adapted for sheep-walks that the attempt to turn them into waving
cornfields would never occur to anybody on earth except a barbarian or
an advanced agriculturist.
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