148 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



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 

 Ward-le-Ham, 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 befel not within the limits of this parish, 

 yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, and as the 

 circumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in a 

 work of this nature. 



The months of January and February, in the year 1774, 

 were remarkable for great melting snows and vast gluts of 

 rain ; so that by the end of the latter month the land-springs, 

 or lavants, began to prevail, and to be near as high as in 

 the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of March 

 also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between 

 the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the 

 great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from it's place, 

 and fell down, leaving a high free-stone cliff naked and 

 bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. 1 It ap- 

 pears 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 it's 

 posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true and upright 

 a position as to open and shut with great exactness, just 

 as in it's first situation. Several oaks also are still standing, 

 and in a state of vegetation after taking the same desperate 

 leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed 

 in some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining ground 



1 In Professor Bell's edition (Vol. ii., p. 103) is a letter from Gilbert's nephew, 

 John, to his cousin Samuel Barker, dated April 6, 1774, describing the late landslip 

 at Hawkley, when, " during the vast rains, a large fragment of the Hanger, late 

 my grandfather's, slipped away, &c." [R. B. S.] 



