The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 | Page 6

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 Beeding to the eastward, and westward 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 time immemorial; and smile at your simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two different breeds might not be reversed? However, an intelligent 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 inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of migration, and yet no doubt are often found in a torpid state; but redstarts, nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, etc., are very ill provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I ever heard of, in a torpid state, and yet can never be supposed, in such troops, from year to year to dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and inquisitive, which from day to day discern the other small birds that are known to abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw nothing like a summer bird of passage; and what is more strange not one wheat-ear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a considerable perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and though many are to be seen to my knowledge all the winter through in many parts of the south of England. The most intelligent shepherds tell me that some few of these birds appear on the downs in March, and then withdraw to breed probably in warrens and stone-quarries: now and then a nest is ploughed up in a fallow on the downs under a furrow, but it is thought a rarity. At the time of wheat-harvest they begin to be taken in great numbers; are sent for sale in vast quantities to Brightelmstone and Tunbridge; and appear at the tables of all the gentry that entertain with any degree of elegance. About Michaelmas they retire and are seen no more till March. Though the birds are, when in season, in great plenty on the south downs round Lewes, yet at East Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of those downs, they abound much more. One thing is very remarkable, that though in the height of the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet they never are seen to flock; and it is a rare thing to see more than three or four at a time; so that there must be a perpetual flitting and constant progressive succession. It does not appear that any wheat-ears are taken to the westward of Houghton Bridge, which stands on the river Arun.
I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of ring-ousels, and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to this season of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of October all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any shrubs and