NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 59 



Though I have now travelled the Sussex-downs 1 

 upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of 

 majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year ; 

 and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. 

 This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far 

 as East-Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called 

 The South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. 

 As you pass along you command a noble view of the 

 wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and 

 sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family 2 just 

 at the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the 

 prospect from Plumpton-plain, near Lewes, that he men- 

 tions those scapes in his "Wisdom of God in the Works 

 of the Creation" with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks 

 them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts 

 of Europe. 



For my own part, I think there is somewhat 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, and not so 

 happy as to convey to you the same idea ; 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 dilation and expansion .... 



Or was there ever a time when these immense 



masses of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation 

 by some adventitious 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 



1 A work has recently been published by Mr. W. H. Hudson on the Sussex 

 Downs, in which many interesting passages will be found dealing with Gilbert 

 White and his visits. [R. B. S.] 



* Mr. Courthope of Danny. [G. W.] 



