NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 173 



Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy 

 as to convey to you the same idea ; but I never contemplate these 

 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 



Or was there ever a time when these immense masses 



of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some ad- 

 ventitious 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 west- 

 ward 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 deter- 

 mined 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. 



