At Sutton Benger eastward is a gravelly field called Barrets, which is sown every year onely with barley:  it hath not lain fallow in the memory of the oldest man’s grandfather there.  About 1665 Mr. Leonard Atkins did sow his part of it with wheat for a triall.  It came up wonderfully thick and high; but it proved but faire strawe, and had little or nothing in the eare.  This land was heretofore the vineyard belonging to the abbey of Malmesbury; of which there is a recitall in the grant of this manner by K. Henry viii. to Sir ——­ Long.  This fruitfull ground is within a foot or lesse of the gravell.
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The soil of Christian Malford, a parish adjoyning to Sutton, is very rich, and underneath is gravell in many parts.
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The first ascent from Chippenham, sc. above the Deny hill, is sandy:  e. g.  Bowdon-parke, Spy-parke, Sandy-lane, great clear sand, of which I believe good glasse might be made; but it is a little too far from a navigable river.  They are ye biggest graines of sand that ever I saw, and very transparent:  some where thereabout is sand quite white.

At Burbidge the soile is an ash-coloured gray sand, and very naturall for the production of good turnips.  They are the best that ever I did eate, and are sent for far and neere:  they are not tough and stringy like other turnips, but cutt like marmalad.

Quaere, how long the trade of turnips has been here?  For it is certain that all the turnips that were brought to Bristoll eighty years since [now 1680] were from Wales; and now none come from thence, for they have found out that the red sand about Bristoll doth breed a better and a bigger turnip.

Burbidge is also remarqueable for excellent pease.
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The turf of our downes, and so east and west, is the best in the world for gardens and bowling- greens; for more southward it is burnt, and more north it is course.

Temple downe in Preshut parish, belonging to the right honble Charles Lord Seymour, worth xxs. per acre, and better, a great quantity of it.

As to the green circles on the downes, vulgarly called faiery circles (dances), I presume they are generated from the breathing out of a fertile subterraneous vapour. (The ring-worme on a man’s flesh is circular.  Excogitate a paralolisme between the cordial heat and ye subterranean heat, to elucidate this phenomenon.) Every tobacco-taker knowes that ’tis no strange thing for a circle of smoke to be whiff’d out of the bowle of the pipe; but ’tis donne by chance.  If you digge under the turfe of this circle, you will find at the rootes of the grasse a hoare or mouldinesse.  But as there are fertile steames, so contrary wise there are noxious ones, which proceed from some mineralls, iron, &c.; which also as the others, cæteris paribus, appear in a circular forme.
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