12 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



ore ; is very hard and heavy, and of a firm, compact 

 texture, and composed 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. 



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 



