172 SHEEP OF SUSSEX DOWNS. 



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 horn- 

 less 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, blackfaces, 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 on the other. And this diversity holds 

 good respectively on each side, from the valley of Bramber 

 and Seeding 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 im- 

 memorial ; 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, intro- 

 duced 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 concerning the withdrawing of the swallow 

 kind, without examining enough into the causes why this 

 tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the 

 disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than that of the 

 former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines, if 

 they please, are certainly capable of migration ; and yet, no 

 doubt, are often found in a torpid state; but redstarts, 



* If Mr. White was now alive he would be led to think very differently, 

 eo great has been the improvement of late years in our breed of sheep. Eo. 



