4 The Natural History of Selborne 



parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and Rogate. 

 If you begin from the south and proceed westward, the adjacent 

 parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Harteley Mauduit, 

 Great Ward le ham [Worldham], Kingsley, Hedleigh [Headley], 

 Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lysse [Liss], and Greatham. The 

 soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the 

 views and aspects. The high part of the south-west consists of a 

 vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is 

 divided into a sheep-down, the high wood and a long hanging wood, 

 called the Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, 

 the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth 

 rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The 

 down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile 

 by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, 

 where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a 

 very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood-lands, 

 heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and 

 east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by 

 Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and 

 Ryegate [Reigate] in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with 

 the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive 

 outline. 



At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies 

 the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three- 

 quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running 

 parallel with the Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by 

 a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white 

 stone, 1 little in appearance removed from chalk ; but seems so far 

 from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the 

 freestone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is plain 

 from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no 

 further, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on 

 the chalks. 



The cart-way of the village divides, in a remarkable manner, two 



1 When White wrote, geology was hardly even in its infancy : the stone to 

 which he here alludes is now known as one of the Upper Greensand series. ED. 



