250 HILLS. 



LETTEE LXXXVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORKE. 



" ' Mugire videbis 



Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos." 



I was boy, I used to read, with astonishment and 

 implicit assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of walking 

 hills and travelling mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, 

 alludes to the credit that was given to such stories, with a 

 delicate but quaint vein of humour, peculiar to the author of 

 the Splendid Shilling : 



" I nor advise, nor reprehend, the choice 

 Of Marcley Hill ; the apple no where finds 

 A kinder mould : yet 'tis unsafe to trust 

 Deceitful ground : who knows but that, once more, 

 This mount may journey, and, his present site 

 Forsaking, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 

 Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 

 For law debates ! " 



But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect 

 that, though our hills may never have journeyed far, yet 

 that the ends of many of them have slipped and fallen 

 away at distant periods, leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. 

 This seems to have been the case with Nore and Whetham 

 Hills, and especially with the ridge between Harteley Park 

 and Ward-le-ham, where the ground has slid into vast 

 swellings and furrows, and lies still in such romantic con- 

 fusion as cannot be accounted for from any other cause. A 

 strange event, that happened not long since, justifies our 

 suspicions ; which, though it befel not within the limits of 

 this parish, yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, 

 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 



