stone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk is plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, 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 woods and coverts might extend down to the opposite bank.

At each end of the village, which runs from southeast to north-west, arises a small rivulet: that at the north-west end frequently fails; but the other is a fine perennial spring, called Well-head, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, inasmuch as it produced on the 14th September, 1781, after a severe hot summer, and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, at a time when many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vales were dry.

and the higher part of Wolmer forest. Round Selborne the stratification is very regular. The Hanger presents first chalk and flints, then chalk without flints; the latter is sometimes burnt as lime. The upper greensand crops out in the malm rock, on which the village is built; gault shows itself in the Emshott road, and the lower greensand extends to Wolmer forest on the east, where it is succeeded by the upper Wealden clay. The angle which the North Downs here make with the Selborne escarpments having probably, as Sir Roderick Murchison thinks, been the scene of great geological ruptures.-ED.

Black malm is decomposed greensand mixed with vegetable débris.-ED.

This spring breaks out of some high grounds joining 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 falling 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 Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farnham stream at Tilfordbridge, swells into a considerable river, navigable at Godalming; from whence it passes to Guildford, and so into the Thames at Weybridge; and thus at the Nore into the German ocean.

Our wells, at an average, run to about sixtythree feet, and when sunk to that depth seldom fail; but produce a fine limpid water, soft to the taste, and much commended by those who drink the pure element, but which does not lather well with soap.

To the north-west, north and east of the village, is a range of fair enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm,* a sort of rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself.

Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone, and have their poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. This white soil produces the brightest hops.

As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer

* White malm, as it is called locally, is decomposed greensand, mixed probably with chalk, for, in opposition to its name, greensand is white, only tinged by the salts of iron occurring in connection with it. This soil, as we learn from a note to the original edition, produces good wheat and clover.-ED.

forest, at the juncture of the clays and sand, the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for its timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shakey, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the forest; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and turnips.

LETTER II.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

N the court of Norton farm house, a manor-farm to the north-west of the village, on the white malm, stood within

these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, ulmus folio latissimo scabro of Ray,* which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough, equal to a moderate tree, in the great storm in the year 1703, yet, when felled, contained eight loads of timber; and, being too bulky for carriage, was sawn off at seven feet above the butt, where it measured near eight feet in the diameter.

There are four species of elm in Englana, the wych elm, ulmus montana, of Smith, and the smooth elm, ulmus glabra, being the most common; many trees are recorded greatly exceeding that described in size. One, at the end of Church Lane, Chelsea, felled in 1745, was thirteen feet in circumference at the base, and a hundred and ten feet high; another at Boddington, in the vale of Gloucester, was eighty feet high, and sixteen feet in circumference. Evelyn also records one growing at Sir Walter Bagot's park, county Stafford, a hundred and twenty feet high, and seventeen feet in girth. which yielded fourteen loads of wood, or 8660 feet of boards and planks, and weighed 97 tons.-ED.

This elm I mention to show to what a bulk planted elms may attain; as this tree must certainly have been such from its situation.

In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called The Plestor.* In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them. Long might it have stood, had not the amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of the inhabitants, and the vicar, who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again: but all his care could not avail; the tree sprouted for a time, then withered and

The Play-place, or Pleystow, locus ludorum, is a level area near the church of about forty-four yards by thirty-six, which was granted, as White tells us in the "Antiquities of Selborne," to the prior and convent of Selborne, by Sir Adam Gurdon in conjunction with his wife Constantia, in the year 1271, in free, clear, and perpetual gift,-liberam, puram, et perpetuam elemosinam. It is now known as The Plestor, and continues, as of old, to be the scene of recreation for the youth and children of the neighbourhood. This Sir Adam Gurdon seems to have been a man of rank and property in the parish. He was a leader of the Mountfort faction in the reign of Henry III, and took part in the rebellion of that Baron, keeping up the war in Hampshire after his defeat and death; for it is related that, after the battle of Evesham, in which Mountfort fell, Gurdon fortified himself in the Hampshire woods, where he was pursued by Prince Edward, who attacked his camp, leaped over the entrenchments, and wounded and took Gurdon prisoner. With a generosity rare in civil wars the gallant young prince raised and pardoned the rebel chief, who became heuceforth one of his most trusted servants.-ED.