10 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
HOLLOW LANE. 
LETTEE V. 
TO THE SAME. 
Among tlie singularities of this place tlie 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 water-courses than roads ; and are bedded with naked rag for 
furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen 
feet beneath the level of the fields ; and after floods, and in frosts, 
exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots 
that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down 
their broken sides ; and especially when those cascades are frozen into 
icicles, hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. These rugged 
gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from 
the paths above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride 
