What he meant by the chalk sweetening the land you would not understand
yet, and I can hardly tell you; for chemists are not yet agreed how it
happens. But he was right; and right, too, what he told you about the
water inside the chalk, which is more important to us just now; for, if
we follow it out, we shall surely come to a cave at last.
So now for the water in the chalk. You can see now why the chalk-downs
at Winchester are always green, even in the hottest summer: because Madam
How has put under them her great chalk sponge. The winter rains soak
into it; and the summer heat draws that rain out of it again as invisible
steam, coming up from below, to keep the roots of the turf cool and moist
under the blazing sun.
You love that short turf well. You love to run and race over the Downs
with your butterfly-net and hunt "chalk-hill blues," and "marbled
whites," and "spotted burnets," till you are hot and tired; and then to
sit down and look at the quiet little old city below, with the long
cathedral roof, and the tower of St. Cross, and the gray old walls and
buildings shrouded by noble trees, all embosomed among the soft rounded
lines of the chalk-hills; and then you begin to feel very thirsty, and
cry, "Oh, if there were but springs and brooks in the Downs, as there are
at home!" But all the hollows are as dry as the hill tops. There is not
a brook, or the mark of a watercourse, in one of them.
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