OF SELBORNE 133 



plain near Lemes, that he mentions those scapes in his "Wisdom 

 of God in the Works of the Creation " with the utmost satisfac- 

 tion, 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 pre- 

 ference 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 fiingus-like pro- 

 tuberances, 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 calcarious 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 ? i 



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 foreheads, and speckled 

 and spotted legs : so that you would think that the flocks of 

 Lahan were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the varie- 

 gated 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 Seeding 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 



1 [ Wild (see above) = weald. White had no suspicion that these Sussex downs 

 might have been shaped by denudation.] 



