NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELBORNE. 237 



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 perpendicular 

 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 exact- 

 ness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are still 

 standing, and in a state of ' vegetation after taking the same des- 

 perate 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 farm- 

 house, in which lived a labourer and his family ; and, just by, a 

 stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old woman and 

 her son, and his wife. These people in the evening, which was 

 very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their 

 kitchens began to heave and part ; and that the walls seemed to 

 open, and the roofs to crack : but they all agree that no tremor of 

 the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt ; only that the 

 wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods 

 and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, 

 remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every 

 moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. 

 When daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the 

 devastations of the night : they then found that a deep rift, or 

 chasm, had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in 

 two ; and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner ; 

 that a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, be- 

 coming deep at the shallow end, and so vice versa; that many large 

 oaks were removed out of their perpendicular, some thrown down, 

 and some fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees ; and that a 

 gate was thrust forward, with its hedge, full six feet, so as to require 

 a new track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff the general 

 course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate descent 

 for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which were 



