It is not easy to determine at what date this foreign timber first invaded the county. It is certainly not Roman, and almost certainly it was not to be discovered in Sussex during the sixteenth century. The Elizabethan cottage of the Weald has oak for its material, and this not only on account of the strength of such wood, but obviously because it was the cheapest and commonest kind of timber; for instance, the thin lathes or strips to which the smallest tiles are affixed are of oak in the old houses as much as are the tie beams and the main rafters. We should hardly find this if the pine had been present in Sussex during that great period of activity in domestic building; for the wood of the pine was far easier to split and to work where great strength was not required. It is thought by some that the tree came in, with all other Scotch things, in the time of James I. But it must be repeated, the point is undetermined. At any rate it has completely transformed the details of the landscape between the Surrey border and the Downs. There is, in the present day, no more peculiarly Sussex view than the sight of the bare line of the Downs caught in a framework of firs. For instance, such a fine sight as you get of them at Heyshott from the height that was once Cobden’s land, or the wonderful bit close by between Selham and Burton. It is from a hill isolated and covered with this kind of timber near Hardham that the best view of the Arun valley may be obtained, and so forth all along the line from which at various points one may regard the range of the Downs. A third and characteristic aspect of Sussex is, of course, that great stretch of the coastal plain to which so much allusion has been made that we need not emphasise it here: the sole impression of the county which those retain who have known it from a residence at Goring, at Lancing, at Findon, at [Illustration: RYE, FROM CAMBER] [Sidenote: MONOTONY OF THE COAST] Arundel, at Slindon, at Eartham, or indeed at any of the villages built upon the southern foot-hills of the Downs. It may be mentioned in connection with this part of the county, that of all maritime districts possessed of remarkable inland scenery Sussex is the least to be remembered by those who have seen it from the sea. The Downs slope up so gradually, the line of the coast is so flat, and the reek of the coastal towns, though slight, so continuous, that the general impression a man has who runs along even upon a clear day from Rye harbour, let us say, to the Looe Stream inside the Owers, thus covering the whole stretch of the county coast, is one of monotony. The Downs make no impression upon the view to landwards, save at one place where, for ten miles or so from Eastbourne to Newhaven, one runs along their seaward end and the high cliffs of Beachy Head, Birling Gap, and Seaford.