274 NATURAL HISTORY 
borne, and as the circumstances were singular, 
may fairly claim a place in a work of this nature. 
The months of January and February, in the 
year 1774, were remarkable for great melting 
snows and vast gluts of rain, so that by the end of 
the latter month the land-springs or Jevants began 
to prevail, and to be near as high as in the memo- 
rable winter of 1764. The beginning of March 
also went on in the same tenour, when, in the night 
between the 8th and 9th of that month, a consider- 
able part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley 
was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a 
high freestone cliff naked and bare, and resembling 
the steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this 
huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and under- 
mined by waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, 
going down in a perpendicular direction; for a 
gate which stood in the field on the top of the hill, 
after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet, 
remained in so true and upright a position as to 
open and shut with great exactness, just as in its 
first situation. Several oaks also are still standing, 
and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same 
desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious 
mass was absorbed in some gulf below is plain also 
from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, 
which is free and unencumbered, but would have 
been buried in heaps of rubbish had the fragment 
parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards 
from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cot- 
tage by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards 
lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm. 
house, in which lived a labourer and his family ; 
and just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was 
