230 'The Natural History of Se I borne 



slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation 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 [weald] 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 of 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 

 become 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 

 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 de- 

 termined to try the experiment ; and has this autumn, at the 



1 We now know that these shapes are due to the slow denuding action 

 of rain-water, which gradually melts away the surface of the chalk beneath 

 the thin layer of turf which covers it. The weald clay underlies the chalk, 

 a thick mass of which once spread over it from North Downs to South 

 Downs. The central portion of this sheet of chalk has long since been 

 removed by denudation ; the harder mass to the north and south still over- 

 lies the clay, but is itself in process of receding slowly. ED. 



