INTRODUCTION xxvii 



place for a man of White's habits; without being in any 

 sense a prison, it was secluded and romantic. 



The natural features of Selborne cannot be rightly under- 

 stood without some tincture of geological knowledge. The 

 chalk formation of the south of England comprises the fol- 

 lowing members : 



[Tertiaries of London and Hampshire basins.] 



Upper Chalk. Gault. 



Lower Chalk. Lower Greensand. 



Chalk Marl. Wealden. 



Upper Greensand. [Jurassic.] 



The top bed of the upper greensand is a chalky marl, 

 with phosphatic nodules, learnedly styled the chloritic marl. 

 This is the "black malm" 1 of Gilbert White. The upper 

 greensand (white malm) contains beds of hard blue limestone 

 ("ragstone") and sandstone (" firestone "), besides marls. 

 The lower beds are all marly, and pass into the clay of the 

 gault. The gault yields a wet soil, stiff and hard to plough, 

 but excellent agricultural land. This is the "strong loam of 

 Alice Holt," which White describes as "of a miry nature, 

 carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to 

 be large timber". The lower greensand, which stretches to 

 the east beyond the gault, forms a picturesque but sterile tract, 

 overgrown with heather, fern and gorse, and dotted with plan- 

 tations of pines and other trees the " rascally heaths of Cob- 

 bett ". White says of Wolmer Forest, which lies on the lower 

 greensand, that it " is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren 

 waste," and that it had no standing tree in its whole extent. 

 The more elevated parts of the forest have since 1825 been 

 to a considerable extent planted with Scotch fir. The forest 

 is controlled by the War Office and the Department of 

 Woods and Forests, who allow no shooting except pheasant 

 shooting and the firing inevitable during military manoeuvres. 

 On certain adjoining estates also the gamekeepers are kept 

 under some restraint. Many birds, such as woodpeckers, 

 fern-owls and herons, are on the increase, and there are hopes 



1 Malm seems to be a local synonym of marl, a chalky clay. 



