OF SELBORNE. 15 
able manner two very incongruous soils. To the 
southwest a rank clay, which requires the labour 
of years to render it mellow; while the gardens to 
the northeast, and small enclosures behind, consist 
of a warm, forward, crumbling mould, called black 
malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable 
and animal manure ; and these may perhaps have * 
been the original site of the town, while the woods 
and coverts might have extended down to the oppo- 
site bank. 
At each end of the village, which runs from 
southeast to northwest, arises a small rivulet; that 
at the northwest end frequently fails ; but the other 
is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by 
drought or wet seasons, called Well-head.* This 
breaks out of some high grounds adjoining to Nore 
Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for 
sending forth two streams into two different seas. 
The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, 
running to Arundel, and so falling into the British 
Channel; the other to the north. The Selborne 
stream makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting 
the Black-down stream at Hedleigh, and the Alton 
and Farnham stream at Titford Bridge, swells into 
a considerable river, navigable at Godalming ; from 
whence it passes to Guildford, and so into the 
Thames at Weybridge, and thus at the Nore into 
the German Ocean. 
Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three 
* This spring produced, September 14, 1781, after a severe 
hot summer, and preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons 
of water in a minute, which is five hundred and forty in an hour, 
and twelve thousand nine hundred and sixty, or two hundred and 
sixteen hogsheads, in twenty-four hours, or one natural day. At 
this time many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vales 
were dry. 
