Under the heading of Wessex I include the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Dorset. There is a close resemblance between the enclosure history of each of these; while Gloucester is a connecting link between them and the Midland counties on the one hand, and the south-western on the other. It may be described as at present a country of very large farms, with a very large proportion of open down, the cultivated land itself remaining remarkably open, being divided in general into large rectangular fields by hedges which are frequently full of gaps. Rights of common here more than elsewhere have decayed, irrespective of actual enclosure; and using the word enclosure in its broad sense, it may be said that in Wessex the process of enclosure has least of all taken visible shape, either in the growing of hedges, or building of walls, or in the conversion of arable to pasture, or pasture to arable, or in the scattering of the habitations of the inhabitants over the whole parish; but that it has most profoundly affected the social life of the villages. The case of Grimstone, in which the nine “livings” for generations held by about a dozen different copyholders, was converted into a single farm, and by no means an exceptionally large one, is typical of the whole district. This aspect has been previously treated. What here has to be noticed is that these characteristics of Wessex enclosure make it more difficult to trace the progress, at least so far as the higher lands are concerned. If Celia Fiennes could revisit the neighbourhood of Amesbury and Stonehenge, she would probably again describe it as “all on the downs, a fine champion country.” It is fortunate that we have the accounts of two such expert observers as Thomas Davis and William Marshall. They wrote practically at the same date, Marshall apparently in 1792, Davis in 1793; but as Marshall confines himself to the actual condition, while Davis deals with the past, he must here take precedence. “THE WESTERN CHALK HILLS. “_Basingstoke to Salisbury._--The state of inclosure varies. To the eastward the country is mostly inclosed, much of it in large, square, regular inclosures. More westward, it is entirely open; as are the tops of the higher hills throughout. Extensive views, with no other break, than what is given by corn or flocks, fallows or the sheep fold.