Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz. Trotton and Rogate. If you begin from the south and proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Harteley Mauduit1, Great Ward le ham, Kingsley, Hedleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lysse, and Greatham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part to the south-west consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village; and is divided into a sheep down, the high wood, and a long hanging wood called The Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, woodlands, heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild Down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking and Ryegate in Surrey, to the north-east; which, altogether, with the country

In the parochial registers the orthography is Harteley Maudytt. Mauduit, used by Gilbert White, is, however, a more usual reading of Malduith, the name of the earliest Norman lord; which was used subsequently to the Conquest as an adjunct to the Saxon appellation, for the purpose of distinguishing this Harteley from the other Hartleys in the same county to the north of it.-E. T. B.

2 The orthography in the text, though formal in appearance, was deliberately adopted by the author, who, in his first edition, inserted all deviations from it as errata: it is, consequently, preserved throughout. Wordlam is a pronunciation of it not unfrequently used in the neighbourhood: but Worldham is the more ordinary name. And in this case I suspect that the vulgar are right; Werildeham, the oldest name which I find for it, belonging to an era prior to the erection in England of Norman castles.-E. T. B.

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 parallel 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 seeming 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 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 southwest is a rank clay, that requires the labour of years to render it mellow; while the gardens to the northeast, 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, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Wellhead3. This 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

3 This spring produced, September 14, 1781, after a severe hot summer, and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, which is five hundred and forty in an hour, and twelve thousand nine hundred and sixty, or two hundred and sixteen hogsheads, in twentyfour hours, or one natural day. At this time many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vales were dry.

14

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 Tilford Bridge, 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 sixty-three 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 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 Forest, at the juncture of the clays and sand, the soil becomes a wet sandy loam, remarkable for timber, and

4 Though Mr. White says this water is soft to the taste, it is undoubtedly what would be usually called hard, the test of which is its not producing a lather with soap, or with soap dissolved in spirit of wine, because it contains sulphate of lime, the sulphuric acid in which, uniting with the soda in the soap, sets free the tallow, composed of the margaric and oleic acids; and these acids, uniting with the lime thus set free, form a soap that will not dissolve in water. From having attended rather minutely to the qualities usually termed hard and soft in water, as connected with the chemistry of bleaching, I can readily distinguish by the taste alone whether water contains lime, iron, or argillaceous substances. -RENNIE.

5 This soil produces good wheat and clover.

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 shaky, 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.

A science that has sprung into active existence since the days in which White wrote, would have explained to him many of the facts described in this Letter; and would have shown that Selborne is not devoid of interest in a geological point of view. He would have learned from it that the several soils which he observed and which he enumerates, forms part of a general system, to the elucidation of which they are adapted materially to contribute.

The parish of Selborne is situated in the lower part of the chalk formation, and embraces within it the upper members of the weald. These are well displayed as they occur in succession, forming strips which run along the parish from north to south: in crossing it from west to east, each of the strata is visited in the order of superposition. They are four in number; comprising the chalk, the upper green sand, the gault, and the lower green sand. In no situation are these several strata more strongly marked or more clearly defined than in this district; where the regularity of their succession is such as to leave no doubt of the distinction between the upper and the lower green sands, and between the gault and the weald clay. The latter formation occurs immediately after quitting the parish at Harting Comb.

The chalk constitutes the mass of the Selborne hill, which is covered, towards the village, by the Hanger. A fine and lengthened swell, sloping gradually at either extremity into a lower and hollowed sweep, is here suddenly terminated on its eastern face by a steep descent. So rapid is the slope that it is only to be ascended along an oblique cutting up the side of the Hanger, (the Bostol,) or by the Zigzag: the Slidders, however practicable for descent, cannot be climbed without considerable difficulty. The Down or Common on the top of the hill, declining gradually towards Newton, as well as towards the descents to the north and south of it, is, in its easy sweep, characteristic of the usual condition of the chalk. The steep declivity towards Selborne offers a deviation from the ordinary character of the formation, connected with the convulsion by which the Weald has been denuded: a convulsion, the effects of which are yet more strongly marked on the abrupt declivity of Nore Hill, the next adjoining promontory to the south.

The covert of the Selborne hill, as indicated in the text, is altogether beech. Its upper part is a fine chalky sheep down.

The prospects visible from its elevated top are admirable for their

LETTER II.

TO THE SAME.

In the court of Norton farm-house, a manor farm to the north-west of the village, on the white malms, stood within these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych

extent and beauty; especially those which embrace the whole of the subjacent formations, and stretch away as far as the ridges of Hind Head and of Black Down. These are among the most engaging of the Selborne scenes. A lovely view is the one which is obtained from the top of the Slidder, embracing a vast extent of varied country, and showing, immediately beneath the observer, the principal buildings of the village.

Next in succession to the chalk is the formation technically known as the upper green sand; and there are spots at Selborne in which a green sand is plentifully distributed through a chalky malm. But the mass of the formation which passes under this denomination consists here of the freestone or firestone of the text, which lies immediately below the chalk, and spreads away with a slow rise towards the east, constituting a slightly sloping but a uniform flat except where its face has been broken into by the force of water or the more petty power of man. In its upper surface deep fissures have been formed for the discharge of the springs from Nore Hill, and from the hill to the north of the village; and the Lithes, and Dorton, and the Combe, and the Priory valley owe their existence to this power. The rocky lanes, spoken of in Letter V., also belong to this stratum: they have been cut in its upper portion principally by the action of long continued traffic on a friable substance; they have gradually become, from their depression, converted into watercourses; and the attrition has been rendered by this means more effectual, the fragments torn off by the wheels of the carts being perpetually removed from the naked rock by the force of the water. But the most strongly marked feature of this formation is the extreme regularity with which it usually rises slowly in a lengthened and widely spread flat, until it terminates suddenly by an abrupt and cliff-like fall, constituting a terrace or escarpment. This character belongs to the whole range of the rock within the parish of Selborne and for several miles both to the north and south of it.

The Selborne rock is the subsoil of the whole of the village, and of the malm lands. Its upper part is of a rubbly character, constituting, in cultivation, the white malm, celebrated for its excellent wheat: and little except wheat and a few patches of hops is to be seen in the enclosed fields that occupy its whole extent. In the valleys of its water-courses there is good pasturage; their sides are well wooded, in some instances entirely with beech, and in others with oak; and along the edges of their