272 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



that the dingy, smoky appearance in the sky, in very dry seasons, 

 arises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through, 

 and render the atmosphere transparent ; because he had observed 

 several bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry; and did 

 never recollect that the air had that look in rainy seasons. 



My friend, who lives just beyond the top of the down, brought 

 his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles 

 towards the Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a 

 great effect; but the experiment did not answer his expectation. 

 He then removed them to the alcove on the Hanger, when the 

 sound, rushing along the Lythe and Comb Wood, was very grand ; 

 but it was at the hermitage that the echoes and repercussions 

 delighted the hearers ; not only filling the Lythe with the roar, 

 as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots ; but, turning to 

 the left, they pervaded the vale above Combwood ponds ; and 

 after a pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend 

 round Hartley Hangers, and to die away at last among the cop- 

 pices and coverts of Ward-le-Ham. It has been remarked before 

 that this district is an Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, 

 and therefore proper for such experiments : we may farther add 

 that the pauses in echoes, when they cease and yet are taken up 

 again, like the pauses in music, surprise the hearers, and have a 

 fine effect on the imagination. 



The gentleman above-mentioned has just fixed a barometer in 

 his parlour at Newton Valence. The tube was first filled here (at 

 Selborne) twice with care, when the mercury agreed and stood 

 exactly with my own ; but, being filled twice again at Newton, the 

 mercury stood, on account of the great elevation of that house, 

 three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at this village, 

 and so continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it 

 may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as 

 27 ; because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes 

 descend below 28. We have supposed Newton House to stand 

 two hundred feet higher than this house : but if the rule holds 

 good, which says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of 

 an inch for every hundred feet elevation, then the Newton baro- 

 meter, by standing three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves 



