158 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like pro- 
tuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hoUows and slopes, 
that carry at once the air of vegetative dilation and expansion. 
Or was there ever a time when 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 from the admeasurements of the hills 
that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that 
these hills surmount the wild at an average at about the rate of 
five hundred feet. 
One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep : from the 
westward till 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 them, 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 variegated 
breed of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the other 
And this diversity holds good respectively on each side from 
the valley of Bramber and Seeding to the eastward, and west- 
ward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with the 
shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has been 
so from tune immemorial : and smile at your simplicity if you 
ask them whether the situation of these two different breeds 
might not be reversed. However, an inteUigent friend of mine 
near Chichester is determined to try the experiment ; and has this 
autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel 
of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western ewes. 
The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest 
wool. 
As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late 
a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look- 
out as possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the 
summer short- winged birds of passage. We make great enquiries 
concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without ex- 
amining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be 
