OF SELBORNE ii 



becoming slippery in frost or rain ; is excellent for dry walls, 

 and is sometimes used in buildings. In many parts of that 

 waste it lies scattered on the surface of the 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 V 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



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 through 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 affright the ladies when they 

 peep down into them from the paths above, and make 

 timid horsemen shudder while they ride along them ; but 



