In the common field of Winterbourn ...... is the celebrated path
called St. Thomas Becket’s path.  It leads from the village up to
Clarendon Parke.  Whether this field be sown or lies fallow, the path
is visible to one that lookes on it from the hill, and it is
wonderfull.  But I can add yet farther the testimonies of two that I
very well know (one of them my servant, and of an excellent sight)
that will attest that, riding in the rode from London one morning in a
great snow, they did see this path visible on the snow.  St. Thomas
Becket, they say, was sometime a cure priest at Winter-bourn, and did
use to goe along this path up to a chapell in Clarendon Parke, to say
masse, and very likely ’tis true:  but I have a conceit that this path
is caused by a warme subterraneous steame from a long crack in the
earth, which may cause snow to dissolve sooner there than elsewhere: 
and consequently gives the dissolving snow a darker colour, just as wee
see the difference of whites in damask linnen.

The right reverend father in God, Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, averres to me that at Silchester in Hampshire, which was a Roman citie, one may discerne in the corne ground the signe of the streetes; nay, passages and hearthes:  which also Dr. Jo.  Wilkins (since Lord Bishop of Chester) did see with him, and has affirm’d the same thing to me.  They were there, and saw it in the spring.

------ “ita res accendunt lumina rebus".- Lucretius.
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The pastures of the vale of White Horse, sc. the first ascent below the plaines, are as rich a turfe as any in the kingdom of England:  e. g. the Idovers at Dauntesey, of good note in Smithfield, which sends as fatt cattle to Smythfield as any place in this nation; as also Tytherton, Queenfield, Wroughton, Tokenham, Mudgelt, Lydyard Tregoz, and about Cricklad, are fatting grounds, the garden of Wiltshire.
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In a little meadow called Mill-mead, belonging to the farme of Broad Chalke, is good peate, which in my father’s time was digged and made use of; and no doubt it is to be found in many other places of this country, if it were search’t after.  But I name it onely to bring in a discovery that Sr Christopher Wren made of it, sc. that ’tis a vegetable, which was not known before.  One of the pipes at Hampton Court being stop’t, Sr Christopher commanded to have it opened (I think he say’d ’twas an earthen pipe), and they found it choak’t with peate,* which consists of a coagmentation of small fibrous vegetables.  These pipes were layd in Cardinal Wolsey’s time, who built the house.

* I believe that in ye pipes was nothing else but Alga fontalis trichodes, (C.  B.) which is often found in conduit pipes.  See my Synopsis.-[John Ray.]

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Earth growing. — In the court of Mrs. Sadler’s, the great house in the close in Salisbury, the pitched causeway lay neglected in the late troubles, and not weeded:  so at lengthe it became overgrown and lost:  and I remember about 1656, goeing to pave it, they found,.... inches deep, a good pavement to their hands.