SUSSEX DOWNS SHEEP. 145 



visit a family* just at the foot of these hills, and was so 

 ravished with the prospect from Plympton-plain, near Lewes, 

 that he mentions those capes in his Wisdom of God in the 

 Works of the Creation, with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks 

 them equal to any thing 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 

 dilatation 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 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 fore- 

 heads, 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 



* Mr Courthope, of Danny. 

 K 



