2 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Oh ee Eee 
on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and 
Rogate. If you begin from the south and proceed westward, 
the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, 
Harteley Mauduit, Great Ward le ham, Kingsley, Hadleigh, 
Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lyffe, and Greatham. The soils of this 
district are almost as various and diversified as the views and 
aspects. The high part of the south-west consists of a vast hill of 
chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is divided 
into a sheep-down, the high wood and a long hanging wood, called 
The Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, 
the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth 
rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The 
down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile 
by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, 
where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a 
very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood-lands, 
heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and 
east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by 
Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and 
Ryegate in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the 
country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive 
outline. 
At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies 
the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three 
quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running 
parallel with The Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by 
a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white 
stone, little in appearance removed from chalk; but seems so far 
from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the 
freestone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is 
plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, 
constitutes the mass of the Selborne hill, which is covered towards the village by the 
Hanger: Next insuccession to the chalk is the formation technically known as the upper 
green-sand, designated in the text, ‘freestone, or firestone.’ Below the rock of the upper 
green-sand "formation is the gault, generally presenting a uniform level, of the most fertile 
character ; within Selborne it exists only as a perfect flat, but to the ‘north in the forest 
of the Holt, it rises into hills. Last of the Selborne strata is the lower green-sand, which 
rises immediately east of the gault into ridges of various elevations, having usually a 
direction not very dissimilar to that of the Hanger.” 
White also in this letter shows his appreciation of the beautiful, in celebrating the 
appearance of the beech-tree, which grows with such peculiar grace or elegance on the 
chalk or oolite formations, and in spring forms groves of the freshest green. We have 
elsewhere stated that we thought other trees possessed more elegance of form, but this 
is a matter of mere taste and opinion, and need not be entered upon here ; certainly in 
spring it is pre-eminent for its enlivening green, and in autumn it exhibits a foliage of the 
warmest tints. 
