162 NA TURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to 

 growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuber- 

 ances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry 

 at once the air of vegetative dilation and expansion .... 



Or was there ever a time when these immense masses of 



calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adven- 

 titious 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 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 at 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 foreheads, 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 determined to try the experiment ; 

 and has this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced 

 a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his t horned western 

 ewes. The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the 

 finest wool. 



As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a 

 season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as 

 possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer 

 short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concern- 

 ing the withdrawing of the swallow-kind, without examining enough 

 into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter ; for, 



