198 WHITE 



rows ; and lies still in such romantic confusion as cannot be 

 accounted for 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 a work of this nature. 

 The months of January and February, in the year 17/4, 

 were remarkable for great melting snows and vast gluts of 

 rain ; so that by the end of the latter month the land-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 Qth of that month, a considerable part of the great 

 woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell 

 down, leaving a high freestone 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 perpen- 

 dicular 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 position 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 pro- 

 digious mass was absorbed in some gulf below is plain also 

 from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is 

 free and unencumbered, 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 farmhouse, in 

 which lived a laborer 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 tre- 



