THE MANOR OF SELBORNE. 



walls. This embellishment carries an odd appearance, and has 

 occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly, " Whether 

 we fastened our walls together with tenpenny nails. 



LETTER V. To T. PENNANT, ESQ. 



AMONG the singularities of this place, the two rocky hollow lanes, 

 the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our atten- 

 tion. These roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the 

 traffick of ages, and the fretting of water, worn down through 

 the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through the se- 

 cond, so that they look more like water-courses than roads, and 

 are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many 

 places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the 

 level of the fields, and after floods, and in frosts, exhibit very 

 grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are 

 twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down 

 their broken sides, and especially when those cascades are frozen 

 into icicles hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. 

 These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep 

 down into them from the paths above, and make timid horse- 

 men shudder while they ride along them; but delight the 

 naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with their 

 curious filices with which they abound. 



The manor of Selborne, were it strictly looked after, with all its 

 kindly aspects, and all its sloping coverts, would swarm with 

 game. Even now hares, partridges, and pheasants abound ; and 

 in old days woodcocks were as plentiful. There are few quails, 



Land-rail. 



because they more affect open fields than enclosures ; after har- 

 vest some few land-rails are seen.* 



* The meadow-crake, or " land-rail" (crex pratensis), is much rarer in the south of England 

 than in the northern and middle districts of our island. A very few pass the winter in the 



