23S THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



from any other cause. A strange event, that happened not 

 long since, justifies our suspicions ; which, though it "befell 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 this work. 



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 laud-springs, or lavants, 

 began to prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable 

 winter of 1764. The beginning of March also went on in the 

 same tenor; when, in the night between the 8th and 9th of 

 that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at 

 Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high 

 free-stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of 

 a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps 

 sapped and undermined 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 posi- 

 tion 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 unincumbered ; 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 cottage 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 inhabited by an old woman and her son, and 

 his wife. These people in the evening, which was very dark 

 and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their kitchens 

 began to heave and part ; and that the walls seemed to open, 

 and the roofs to crack : but they all agree that no tremor of 

 the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt ; only that 

 the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the 

 woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to 



