382 The Natural History of Selborne 



remarks that frequent small rains keep the air moist; while 

 heavy ones render it more dry, by beating down the vapours. 

 He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky appearance in 

 the sky, in very dry seasons, arises from the want of moist- 

 ure sufficient to let the light through, and render the atmos- 

 phere transparent; because he had observed several bodies 

 more diaphanous when wet than dry, and did never recollect 

 that the air had that look in rainy seasons. 



My friend, who lives just beyond the top of the down, 

 brought his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with 

 their muzzles towards the Hanger, supposing that the report 

 would have had a great effect; but the experiment did not 

 answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove 

 on the Hanger; when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and 

 Comb- wood was very grand; but it was at the Hermitage that 

 the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers ; not only 

 filling the Lythe with the roar, as if all the beeches were 

 tearing up by the roots ; but, turning to the left, they per- 

 vaded the vale above Comb-wood ponds, and after a pause 

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

 Hartley 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 1 

 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 twice again 

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

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

 barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the 



1 This barometer can still he seen at Newton Valence vicarage. The 

 incumbent at this time and for many years after was the Rev. Edmund 

 White, Gilbert White's nephew. E. H. N. 



