10 MANOR OF SELBORNE. 



very hard and heavy, and of a firm, compact texture, and com- 

 posed of a small roundish crystalline grit, cemented together 

 by a brown, terrene, ferruginous matter ; will not cut without 

 difficulty, nor easily strike fire with steel. Being often found 

 in broad flat pieces, it makes good pavement for paths about 

 houses, never becoming slippery in frost or rain ; is excellent 

 for dry walls, and is sometimes used in buildings. In many 

 parts of that waste it lies scattered on the surface of the ground ; 

 but is dug on Weaver's Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge 

 of that forest, where the pits are shallow, and the stratum thin. 

 This stone is imperishable. 



From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, and 

 giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small fragments 

 about the size of the head of a large nail ; and then stick the 

 pieces into the wet mortar along the joints of their freestone 

 walls. This embellishment carries an odd appearance, and has 

 occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly, " Whether 

 we fastened our walls together with tenpenny nails?" 



LETTER V. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



AMONG the singularities of this place, the two rocky hollow 

 lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve 

 our attention. These roads, running through the malm lands, 

 are, by the traffic of ages, and the fretting of water, worn down 

 through the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through 

 the second ; so that they look more like watercourses than 

 roads, and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. 

 In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet 

 beneath the level of the fields ; and after floods, and in frosts, 

 exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled 

 roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents 

 rushing down their broken sides ; and especially when those 

 cascades are frozen into icicles, hanging in all the fanciful 

 shapes of frostwork. These rugged gloomy scenes affright 

 the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths 

 above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride 

 along them ; but delight the naturalist with their various 

 botany, and particularly with their curious filices, with which 

 they abound. 



The manor of Selborne, w r ere it strictly looked after, with all 

 its kindly aspects, and all its sloping coverts, would swarm 



