NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 
3 
the labour of years to render it mellow ; 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 ; and these may perhaps have been the original 
site of the town; while the woods and coverts might extend down to 
the opposite bank. 
At each end of the village, which runs from south-east to north-west, 
arises a small rivulet : that at the north-west end frequently fails ; but 
the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet 
seasons, called Well-head.^ This breaks out of some high grounds join- 
WELL-HEAD. 
ing to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending 
forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south 
becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so sailing into 
the British Channel : the other to the north. The Selborne stream 
makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting the Black-down stream at 
* TMs spring produced, September 10, 1781, after a severe liot summer, and a 
preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, which is 
640 in an hour, and 12,960, or 216 hogsheads, in twenty-four hours, or one natural 
day. At this time many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vale 
were dry. 
The "Well Head," as represented in the vignette, "breaks out of the land at 
the foot of the Hanger, and spreading into a picturesque pond contracts again 
into a narrow stream, which flows past the village, and swells into a river at 
Godalming. " 
B 2 
