NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



on twelve 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, Kingsley, Hadleigh, 

 Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lyffe, 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 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, 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, 



constitutes the mass of the Selborne hill, which is covered towards the village by the 

 Hanger. Next in succession to the chalk is the formation technically known as the upper 

 green-sand, designated in the text, 'freestone, or firestone.' Below the rock of the upper 

 green-sand formation is the gault, generally presenting a uniform level, of the most fertile 

 character ; within Selborne it exists only as a perfect flat, but to the north in the forest 

 of the Holt, it rises into hills. Last of the Selborne strata is the lower green-sand, which 

 rises immediately east of the gault into ridges of various elevations, having usually a 

 direction not very dissimilar to that of the Hanger." 



White also in this letter shows his appreciation of the beautiful, in celebrating the 

 appearance of the beech tree, which grows with such peculiar grace or elegance on the 

 chalk or oolite formations, and in spring forms groves of the freshest green. We have 

 elsewhere stated that we -thought other trees possessed more elegance of form, but this 

 is a matter of mere taste and opinion, and need not be entered upon here ; certainly in 

 spring it is pre-eminent for its enlivening green, and in autumn it exhibits a foliage of the 

 warmest tints. 



