6 
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
division is very warm, and highly favourable to the 
powers of vegetation. The Downs fronting the 
south-west are bleak, being exposed to violent 
winds, which are impregnated with saline particles, 
occasioned by the spray beaten against the sea- 
beach ; and this influence affects the animals as 
well as vegetables indigenous to the hills. In the 
Weald the due circulation of air is greatly impeded 
by the forests and thick hedges, and the climate is 
in consequence cold and damp.” * 
Such are the geographical features of the masses 
which compose the county of Sussex ; but as, in 
the course of our investigations, we shall have 
occasion more immediately to refer to the south- 
eastern division, it will be necessary to point out 
with greater precision the course and position of 
the chalk hills of that district, and more especially 
of those in the vicinity of Lewes and Brighton. 
The South Downs, strictly so called, are that 
portion of the Sussex range which lies between 
Eastbourn and Shoreham. They are twenty-six 
miles long, about seven miles in breadth, and are 
divided by the intervention of rivers into four 
groups. 
The easternmost rises with a gentle slope near 
Eastbourn proceeds inland as far as Folkington, 
and is separated from the middle division by the 
Cuckmere. The southern escarpment composes 
a rocky and precipitous range of cliffs, extending 
eastward along the coast from the embouchure of 
Cuckmere River to Beachy Head, where it rises 
to the altitude of 56h feet. 
* Dallaway’s Western Sussex, p. G. 
