336 The Natural History of Selborne 



the fields below, one hundred and eighty-one; and a partial 

 fall, concealed in the coppice, extends seventy yards more ; so 

 that the total length of this fragment that fell was two hundred 

 and fifty-one yards. About fifty acres of land suffered from 

 this violent convulsion ; two houses were entirely destroyed ; 

 one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls being cracked 

 through the veiy stones that composed them ; a hanging cop- 

 pice was changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds 

 and an arable field so broken and rifted by the chasms as to 

 be rendered for a time neither fit for the plough or safe for 

 pasturage, till considerable labour and expense had been be- 

 stowed in levelling the surface and filling in the gaping fissures. 1 



1 In this letter White shows himself prophetic of Lyell's famous doctrine 

 that geological phenomena are due, not to mighty cataclysms, but to the 

 slow result of causes still in action. ED. 



