OF SELBORNE. 250 



vaded the vale above Combwood-ponds ; and after a pause 

 seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round Harte- 

 ley-hangerS) and to die away at last among the coppices 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 again twice 

 at Newton, the mercury stood, on account of the great eleva- 

 tion of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than the baro- 

 meters 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 mer- 

 cury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch for every 

 hundred feet elevation, then the Neivton barometer, by 

 standing three-tenths low r er than that of Selborne, proves that 

 Newton-house must be three hundred feet higher than that in 

 which I am writing, instead of two hundred. 



It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at 

 Selborne stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barome- 

 ters at South Lambeth ; whence we may conclude that the 

 former place is about three hundred feet higher than the 

 latter ; and with good reason, because the streams that rise 

 with us run into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London. 

 Of course therefore there must be lower ground all the way 

 from Selborne to South Lambeth ; the distance between which, 

 all the windings and indentings of the streams considered, 

 cannot be less than an hundred miles *. 



I am, &c. 



* [I find by means of a good aneroid barometer that the highest part 



S2 



