“The chalk is our landscape and our proper habitation.  The chalk gave us our first refuge in war by permitting those vast encampments on the summits.  The chalk filtered our drink for us and built up our strong bones; it was the height from the slopes of which our villages, standing in a clear air, could watch the sea or the plain; 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 scarred to any great extent by cultivation.  The sheep and the birds are mostly in sole possession and are almost the only living moving things on the hills.  The fox, though at one time common, is now very rarely seen, for game, with the disappearance of gorse and bramble, has almost vanished, and other beasts of prey, weasel and stoat, shun the open uplands where the only enemy of field mouse and vole is the eagle of the south country, the peregrine falcon.