; we carved
it--when it was hard enough; it holds our first ornaments; our clear
streams run over it; the shapes and curves it takes and the kind of
close rough grass it bears (an especial grass for sheep) are the cloak
of our counties; its lonely breadths delight us when the white clouds
and the necks move over them together; where the waves break it into
cliffs, they are characteristic of our shores, and through its thin
coat of whitish mould go the thirsty roots of our three trees--the
beech, the holly, and the yew. For the clay and the sand might be
deserted or flooded and the South Country would still remain, but if
the Chalk Hills were taken away we might as well be in the Midlands."
(Hilaire Belloc: _The Old Road_.)

[Illustration: GEOLOGY OF THE DOWNS.]

A description of these hills, however short, would be incomplete
without some reference to the sheep, great companies of which roam the
sunlit expanse with their attendant guardians--man and dog (who deserve
a chapter to themselves). Southdown mutton has a fame that is
extra-territorial; it has been said that the flavour is due to the
small land snail of which the sheep must devour millions in the course
of their short lives. But the explanation is more probably to be found
in the careful breeding of the local farmers of a century or so ago.
Gilbert White refers to two distinct breeds--"To the west of the Adur
... all had horns, smooth white faces and white legs, but east of that
river all flocks were poll sheep (hornless) ... black faces with a
white tuft of wool." Since that day, however, east has been west and
west east and the twain have met.

[Illustration: OLD HOUSE, PETWORTH.]

The traveller _may_ be fortunate enough to come across a team of oxen
ploughing. The phenomenon is yearly becoming more rare; but within
sight and sound of the Eastbourne expresses between Plumpton and
Cooksbridge this archaic survival from a remote past is more likely to
be seen than elsewhere.

The oxen are usually black and are the remnants of a particular breed,
the outcome of a long and slow experiment in getting the right sort of
draught animal. The ploughs themselves, as Jefferies says, "must have
been put together bit by bit in the slow years--slower than the ox....
How many thousand, thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows
before ... the curve to be given to this or that part grew upon the
mind, as the branch grows upon the tree!"

But the Downs are not