NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 135 



gous to growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus- 

 like protuberances, 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 

 adventitious 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 be- 

 come hornless, or as they call them, poll-sheep; and have, 

 moreover, black faces with a white tuft of wool on their fore- 

 heads, 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 re- 

 spectively on each side from the valley of Bramber and Beed- 

 ing 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. How- 

 ever, 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. 



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 



