24 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



this same feeling of elation, which yet differs in 

 character in each locality, and I may be able to 

 analyse my feelings in all or some of these cases and 

 find out why they differ. What is to be said con- 

 cerning the special quality of the South Downs — the 

 mental flavour they impart ? 



I remember that Gilbert White speculated on 

 this very question, in the often-quoted Letter LVL, 

 where he says : " Though I have now travelled the 

 Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still in- 

 vestigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh 

 admiration year by year, and I think I see new 

 beauties each time I traverse it. . . . For my own 

 part, I think there is something peculiarly sweet and 

 amusing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk hills, 

 in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, 

 broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may be 

 singular in my opinion . . . but I never contemplate 

 these mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat 

 analogous 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 dilatation and expansion ; or was 

 there ever a time when the calcareous masses were 

 thrown into fermentation by some adventitious mois- 

 ture — were raised and leavened into shape 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 ? " 



