152 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
only round Lewes. As you pass along, it commands a noble 
view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs 
and sea on the other. Mr. Eay used to visit a family at Danny, 
j ust at the foot of these hills ; he was so ravished with the 
prospect from Plumpton-plain near Lewes, that he mentions 
those landscapes in his " Wisdom of God in the Works of the 
Creation " with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal 
to anytliing he had seen in the finest parts of Europe. 
For my own part, I think there is something peculiarly sweet 
and pleasing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills in 
preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abiupt, 
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 pro- 
tuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, 
that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expan- 
sion. Or was there ever a time w^lien 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 of the admeasarements of the hills that 
have been taken round my house, I should suppose that these 
hills surmount the wild at an average of about the rate of five 
hundred feet. 
One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep ; from the west- 
ward until 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 thetn. 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 
Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the varie- 
gated breed of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the 
