2 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assem- 
blage of hill, dale, wood-lands, heath, and water. The prospect 
is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of moun- 
tains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild-down near Guilford, 
and by the downs round Dorking and Ryegate, in Surrey, to the 
north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and 
Farnham, form a noble and extensive outline. 
At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies 
the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three 
quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running pa- 
rallel with the Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by 
a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white 
stone, little in appearance removed from chalk, but seems so far 
from being calcareous that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the 
freestone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk is 
plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks ex- 
tend and no further, and thrive as well on them, where the ground 
is steep, as on the chalks.* 
The cart-way of the village 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, 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 wood and coverts might extend dow^n to the opposite bank. 
* It is doubted by many naturalists whether the beech {fagus sylvatica) can strictly be consi- 
dered a truly British tree, the older examples of it being mostly situate in places where they may 
probably have been planted. It is now, however, at least most thoroughly naturalized, and in 
many districts certainly assumes an indigenous aspect, particularly in the extensive woods 
surrounding Stokenchurch, Bucks, where the young timber is manufactured on a large scale into 
chairs, bedsteads, and the like, many waggon-loads of which are weekly sent up to London. It 
appears to thrive most upon a chalky soil, where it will attain considerable dimensions, especially 
when growing on a slope. Some very beautiful examples of it may be seen on that charming 
spot, the bold chalk-escarpment of Box-hill, near Dorking, in Surrey; and several of surpassing 
magnitude in Norbury-park, in the same neighbourhood, where also are some noble yews, and 
many Spanish chestnuts of prodigious size, together with some gigantic oaks, and within a 
short distance several remarkablj' fine common elms and huge aspen poplars, which last tree 
attains a magnificent growth in Surrej^ The interior of this county will indeed vie with any 
part of England for the growth of most of our forest-trees ; but, unfortunately, the finer examples 
are fast disappearing before the woodman's axe — the need, or avarice, or want of taste of one 
proprietor of ten dooming to destruction that which for centuries had been the pride and 
admiration of a long line of predecessors. An aged and curious remnant of a beech, now 
growing in the Windsor Great Park, and figured and described by Mr. Jesse, in the second 
series of his delightful " Gleanings in Natural History," measures 36 feet in circumference ; 
and a very splendid and far more beautiful tree of the same species, now in the pride of its 
growth, situate within a short distance of Lyndhurst, in the New-forest, Hants, is VFell known 
and deservedly celebrated as the " queen" of that princely forest. — En. 
