These four great belts may be traced, not only in the relief of the county, but also in its superficial geology; the sea plain is throughout of a deep, strong, brown loamy soil, among the most fertile in England, and fetching by far the highest rents paid anywhere in the county. In the best of its stretch, between Chichester and Worthing, it is from four to six miles broad, closely inhabited and, though recently marred by the growth of a whole string of watering-places, still preserving a very characteristic life of its own. Except Chichester no town of any antiquity stands upon it, but it nourishes a great number of prosperous agricultural villages, the size and the architecture of whose churches are sufficient to prove their economic condition in the past. Among the most characteristic of these is Yapton, which is supposed to be the “tun” or hamlet of Eappa--a comrade of St. Wilfred’s, the missionary and the first bishop of the county. Lyminster is another excellent example of what these places were in the past, and its great church is the more striking from the decay of the parish around it. The forest ridge (to take the farther boundary first) has, though somewhat confused, a geological characteristic of its own, for it consists of sand rising from and mixed with the clay of the Weald. This clay, in its turn, lying between the forest ridge and the Downs, though diversified by occasional outcrops of sand, is fairly uniform. From the beginning it has been covered, not very thickly, but very generally, with those short, strong oaks which have furnished the timber for all the old buildings of the county. We will turn later to the question of whether this stiff and somewhat ungrateful soil of the Weald was ever wholly uninhabited: in this initial survey it must suffice to remark that even to-day the development of that soil is difficult. Places specially favoured with good water have been occupied for centuries, and form at the present time the market towns of the Weald. The spaces between them are remarkable [Illustration: LYMINSTER] [Sidenote: WATER ON THE WEALD]