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ing description of the mural paintings in the church, drawn up by Mr. H. Mid- 

 dleton, architect, of Cheltenham, by whom they had been copied at the time 

 when they were discovered. This paper has been subsequently printed in the 

 Journal of the Midland Institute, and has probably been seen by some, at least, of 

 our members present to-day. On this part of the day's proceedings I have no 

 remark to add, but I may perhaps be forgiven if on the subject of the landslip I 

 venture to make a few remarks, not at all of my own, but borrowed from other 

 sources, and can only express the hope that there may be some of our members 

 present to whom they are not already trite and familiar. It was in the year 1575 

 that, as old Camden tells us, the " hill called Marclay rose, as it were, from sleep, 

 and for three days moved on its vast body with a horrible noise, driving everything 

 before it to a higher ground, to the great astonishment of the beholders, by that 

 kind of earthquake, I suppose, which naturalists call Brasmatia." On this des- 

 cription I will only remark that this last word is sing^ularly inapplicable to the 

 movement in question, for it is used by Aristotle (though not exactly in the form 

 mentioned by Camden) to describe an earthquake with an up and down motion 

 at right angles to the earth. Neither was the movement of the hill produced, I 

 believe, by an earthquake at all, but was merely a landslip on an extensive scale, 

 such as occur every winter on a smaller one in many of our Herefordshire banks, 

 such as took place a year or two ago on one somewhat larger at Moccas ; such 

 slips as have taken place in the Isle of Wight from time to time, and of which I 

 believe the latest took place in 1820, and which have produced the striking and 

 picturesque scenery of the underclifl ; and lastly, such as the one still more exten- 

 sive, which took place in 1839 at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, whose effects I myself 

 witnessed not long after its occurrence. As this is probably the largest slip 

 which has taken place in this country within the recollection of most people now 

 living, I may perhaps be pardoned if I inflict on the members now present a des- 

 cription of it, taken from a newspaper of the day, from which I jjossess a cutting. 

 The writer says that he obtained his information from the farmer of part of the 

 land, who told him that two of his labourers who occupied cottages on the cliff, 

 when they had returned home from his house on Christmas Eve, perceived that the 

 floors of their dwellings were slightly lifted, and that the ceilings had given way 

 a little. Early next morning they were obliged to make a hasty retreat, as the 

 land was evidently giving way fast, and about four or five o'clock on Thursday 

 morning, more than 40 acres of ground on the ridge of the cliff parted from the 

 main land, leaving a chasm in some parts more than 200 feet wide. Into this 

 chasm several immense slices of the next fields soon afterwards slipped down, and 

 others farther on were broken into fissures. Perhaps more than 150 acres of land 

 were rendered useless ; one of the cottages was moved from its position to a dis- 

 tance of 40 or 50 feet below, and of the other, though it was not removed, the 

 floors were raised and the ceilings and roof were tumbling in. Near the spot 

 many large elm trees were quite buried. The separated mass of earth, standing 

 up in immense pillars torn asunder from each other, with the great chasm be- 

 tween it and the main land, presented a very grand appearance. On the Monday 

 previous to the slip 300 sheep were feeding in the field afterwards destroyed, but 



