334 'The Natural History of Se I borne 



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 confusion as cannot be ac- 

 counted for from any other cause, A strange event, that hap- 

 pened 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 singu- 

 lar, 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 

 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 

 eighth and ninth 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 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 vegeta- 

 tion 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 an 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 labourer and his family ; and, just by, a stout new barn. 



