No visitor should leave the town without paying a brief visit to the great earthworks of Maumbury Rings and Poundbury Camp, the former of which is undergoing a series of scientific excavations by Mr. St. George Gray, engaged for the purpose by a joint committee of the Dorset Field Club and the British Archæological Association. Thomas Hardy, whose Dorchester home is but a short distance away, describes Maumbury as "a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at opposite extremities of its diameter, north and south. It was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude." It has been estimated that the enclosure could accommodate 13,000 spectators, and over 10,000 are said to have assembled here in 1705, when Mary Channing was strangled and burned, on very slight evidence, for the murder of her husband. Both of these historic earthworks were nearly destroyed in the early days of railway enterprise, and Poundbury was saved only at the last moment by Brunel consenting to tunnel beneath instead of taking his line right through it, as he had at first intended. In the Wessex novels and poems it figures as "Square Pummerie", the place where Henchard's "merry-making" occurred. [Illustration: BERE REGIS] One of the most delightful of the numerous walks from Dorchester is that which leaves the town by the two bridges near the White Hart, the spot where the local High Street merges imperceptibly into the great London Road. Journeying along this great chalk highway a fine view is obtained of the suburb of Fordington, the "Durnover" of _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. "Here wheat ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's temple, opened directly upon the main thoroughfare.... Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow--shepherds in an intramural squeeze." A mile or so of pleasant, if somewhat dusty, walking brings us to Stinsford crossroads, where a right-hand turn leads to Stinsford House, with its terraced garden, and a very pretty church, the Mellstock Church of _Under the Greenwood Tree_. In this pleasing little church Tranter Dewy and his family attended service, and here the valiant Thomas Leaf listened to the sermons of "His Holiness". It was at Mellstock that Elizabeth-Jane and her mother caught their first glimpse of the town of Casterbridge. From Stinsford a charming walk through the park of Kingston House, the Knapwater House of _Desperate Remedies_, brings us to the junction of the roads that lead to Higher and Lower Bockhampton respectively.