The Hop Soil — Selhornc. 
255 
crop of wheat, which is highly esteemed and largely exported 
for seed, but also in stiffening the straw — a most valuable equality 
on Strang rich land. But this is the effect of lime anywhere. 
There is yet another variety lying in beds mixed with the clay, 
which has received tlie name of the " silica rock," from the 
(juantitv of soluble silica which was found in it by Messrs. Way 
and Paine. From Farnham to Petersfield (where there is a section 
40 feet thick) this rock extends over some hundreds of acres, 
reaching to a depth of from 50 to 100 feet, nearly the whole 
being under hop cultivation, but capable of growing wheat, 
beans, or anything. It occurs again about Selborne, and may be 
traced at the Undercliff, Isle of Wight, in its proper geological 
position between the chalk above and the gault below. In 
appearance it is whitey-brown, not unlike a rich limestone, and 
in touch is soft. It is quarried for manure, and is itself benefited 
by a dressing of gault. 
A part of this eastern district has been described by the 
hand of a master. In the village of Selborne, was born, lived, 
and died, Gilbert White, of whose topographical sketch u 
portion is directly to our present purpose. " The cartway of the 
village," he says, " divides in a remarkable manner two very 
incongruous soils. To the south-west is a rank clay that requires 
the labour of years to render it mellow [upper gault] ; while the 
gardens to the north-east and small enclosures behind consist of 
a warm, forward, crumbling mould, called ' black malm,' which 
seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal manure [lower 
gault, which here happens to be naturally drained]. To the 
north-west, north, and east of the village is a range of fair 
enclosures, consisting of what is called ' white malm,' a sort of 
rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and 
rain, moulders to pieces and becomes manure to itself." "Still 
on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land, 
neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, 
yet kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone. This 
white soil produces the brightest hops." These last are what 
we should term different kinds of marl, and are above the free- 
stone or firestone (as it is indifferently called, from its easiness to 
work, and from the uses to which it is applied). Speaking of 
the two forests in the parish, " Wolmer, with her sister forest 
Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt," * he says, " though they are only 
* The orthography of this forest is various. Gilbert White writes Ayles, alias 
Alice Holt; an inquisition 36 Ed-ivard III. (13G2) has Aisholt; the Ordnance 
Survey prints Alder Holt. Holt is the hill-wood ; Alice may be a corruption of 
Ayles, but Aish cannot be ; aspirates and liquids would* not be interchanged. Ayles 
and Aish are two names, etjmologically distinct. Ayles Kolt is the cable's hill- 
wood (as Aylesbury is the eagle' s-hury ) ; Aish-holt "is the ash hill-wood; Alder 
