viii WHITE'S SELBORNE 



He further describes it as an anathoth, a place of responses 

 or echoes. 1 



Its climate a century ago, notwithstanding, must have been 

 very variable, inasmuch as he places the flowering of the 

 hawthorn as occurring in different years, from 1768 to 1793, 

 upon dates as widely apart as April twentieth and June 

 eleventh ; the first appearance of the orange-tip butterfly 

 from March thirteenth to May nineteenth, and the gleam of 

 the first glowworm's evening lamp from May first to the 

 second week of June. A perfect type of English woodland 

 scenery, the outline of the parish where nearly all his obser- 

 vations were made, comprised not less than thirty miles. Sel- 

 borne is still shut off from the railway and the fret of the much- 

 traveled highway, being nearly five miles distant from the 

 nearest railway connection, Liss, on the one hand, and from 

 Alton on the other. The village is sheltered and protected 

 from the westerly winds by the Hanger ("hanger" being the 

 old Saxon term for "wood"), a very steep acclivity three 

 quarters of a mile in length, the elbow of a chain of long hills, 

 forming the northern slope of Selborne Hill, three hundred 

 feet higher than the village. Besides the original ascent 

 termed the Zigzag, White had a road constructed called the 

 Bostal, his favorite walk, leading to the heights, where 

 he and his friends were wont to repair to drink tea of a 

 pleasant summer's evening. The summit commands a fine 

 view of the South Downs, and is the "beech-grown hill" 

 and " romantic spot " so poetically alluded to in " The Invi- 

 tation " - 



..." whence in prospect lies 



Whatever of landscape charms our feasting eyes ; 

 The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture-plain, 

 The russet fallow and the golden grain ; 

 The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light, 

 'Til all the fading picture fails the sight." 



The old rocky hollow lanes that are frequently referred to, 

 the one communicating with Alton and the other with the 



1 In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, 

 it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return 

 the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or 

 the melody of birds, very agreeably. Letter LXXX. 



