NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 269 



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 pervaded the vale above Combwood 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 there- 

 fore 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 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 elevation of that house, 

 three- tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at this village, 

 and so continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it 

 may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as 

 27 ; because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes 

 descend below 28. We have supposed Newton House to stand two 

 hundred feet higher than this house : but if the rule holds good, 

 which says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch 

 for every hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by 

 standing three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that 

 Newton House must be three hundred feet higher than that in 

 which I am writing, instead of two hundred. 



It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at Selborne 

 stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South 

 Lambeth : whence we may conclude that the former place is about 

 three hundred feet higher than the latter ; and with good reason, 

 because the streams that rise with us run into the Thames at Wey- 

 bridge, and so to London. Of course, therefore, there must be 

 lower ground all the way from Selborne to South Lambeth; the 

 distance between which, all the windings and indentings of the 

 streams considered, cannot be less than an hundred miles. 



I an:, .Nic. 



