NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 149 



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 earth- 

 quake, 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, re- 

 mained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting 

 every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered 

 edifices. When day-light 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, becoming 

 deep at the shallow end, and so vice versd ; 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 it's 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 rifted, 

 in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger, 

 as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began ; and 

 running across the lane, and under the buildings, made 

 such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some 

 time ; and so over to an arable field on the other side, 

 which was strangely torn and disordered. The second 



