MANOR OF SELBORNE. 23 



scattered on tlie surface of tlie ground ; but is dug on 

 Weaver's Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge of that 

 forest, where the pits are shallow, and the stratum thin. 



This stone is imperishable. 



From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, 

 and giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small 

 fragments about the size of the head of a large nail, and 

 then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along the joints of 

 their freestone walls. This embellishment carries an odd 

 appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask 

 us pleasantly, "Whether we fastened our walls together 

 with tenpenny nails ?" 



LETTER y. 



TO THE SAME. 



Among the singularities of this place, the two rocky hollow 

 lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve 

 our attention. These roads, running thiough the malm 

 lands, are, by the traffic of ages, and the fretting of water, 

 worn down through the first stratum of our freestone, and 

 partly through the second ; so that they look more like 

 water-courses than roads ; and are bedded with naked rag 

 for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced 

 sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields ; and, 

 after floods, and in frosts, exhibit very grotesque and wild 

 appearances, from the tangled roots that are twisted among 

 the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken 

 sides ; and especially when those cascades are frozen into 

 icicles, hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. 

 These rugged gloomy scenes aftright the ladies when they 

 peep do\Mi into them, from the paths above, and make timid 

 horsemen shudder while they ride along them ; but delight 

 the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly 

 with their curious Alices, with which they abound.* 



* The deep lanes in this part of Hampshire and Sussex are truly charming; 

 from the roots of trees twisting themselves, as they do, in fantastic shape* 



