162 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 
mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to 
growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuber- 
ances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry 
at once the air of vegetative dilation and expansion... . 
Seasore alae Or was there ever a time when these immense masses of 
calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adven- 
titious moisture ; were raised and leavened into such shapes by 
some plastic power; and so made to swell and heave their broad 
backs into the sky so much above the less animated clay of the 
wild below ? 
By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills that 
have been taken round my house, I should suppose that these 
hills surmount the wild at an average at about the rate of five 
hundred feet. 
One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep : from the westward 
till you get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, and smooth 
white faces, and white legs, and a hornless sheep is rarely to be 
seen ; but as soon as you pass that river eastward, and mount 
Beeding Hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or as they call 
them, poll-sheep ; and have, moreover, black faces with a white 
tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs, so 
that you would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on 
one side of the stream, and the variegated breed of his son-in-law 
Jacob were cantoned along on the other. And this diversity holds 
good respectively on each side from the valley of Bramber and 
Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the 
downs. If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell 
you that the case has been so from time immemorial; and smile at 
your simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two 
different breeds might not be reversed? However, an intelligent 
friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; 
and has this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced 
a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western 
ewes. The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the 
finest wool. 
As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a 
season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as 
possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer 
short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concern- 
ing the withdrawing of the swallow-kind, without examining enough 
into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter ; for, 
