NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 225 



answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove 

 on the Hanger, when the sound, rushing along the Lith and 

 Comb Wood, was very grand ; but it was at the hermitage that 

 the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers ; not only 

 filling the Lith with the roar, as if all the beeches were tear- 

 ing up by the roots ; but, turning to the left, they pervaded the 

 vale above Comb Wood ponds ; and after a pause seemed to take 

 up the crash again, and to extend round Harteley 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 parlor 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 barometer, by standing three- 

 tenths lower 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 



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