340 NATURAL HISTORY 



beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it would 

 continue more and more to be hidden every night, till at 

 length it would descend quite behind the object again ; 

 and so nightly more and more to the westward. 



LETTER XLV. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE. 



" Mugire videbis 



Sub pedibus terrain, et descendere montibus ornos." 



WHEN I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment 

 and implicit assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of 

 walking hills and travelling mountains. John Philips, 

 in his Cider, alludes to the credit that was given to 

 such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour 

 peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling. 



" I nor advise, nor reprehend, the choice 

 Of Marcley Hill ; the apple no where finds 

 A kinder mould : yet 'tis unsafe to trust 

 Deceitful ground : who knows but that, once more, 

 This mount may journey, and, his present site 

 Forsaking, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 

 The goodly plants, affording matter strange 

 For law debates !" 



But, when I came to consider better, I began to 

 suspect that though our hills may never have journeyed 

 far, yet that 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 Wardleham, where 

 the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows ; 

 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, 



