ECHOES BAROMETER. ^65 



that the dingy smoky appearance in the sky, in very dry 

 seasons, arises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the 

 light through, and render the atmosphere transparent ; because 

 he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when wet 

 than dry ; and did never recollect that the air had that look 

 in rainy seasons. 



My friend, who lives just beyond the top of the Down, 

 brought his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with 

 their muzzles towards the Hanger, supposing that the report 

 would have had a great effect; but the experiment did not 

 answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove 

 on the Hanger ; when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and 

 Comb-wood, was very grand : but it was at the Hermitage 

 that the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers ; not 

 only filling the Lythe with a roar, as if all the beeches were 

 tearing up by the roots, but, turning to the left, they pervaded 

 the vale above Comb-wood ponds ; and, after a pause, seemed 

 to take up the crash again, and to extend round Harteley 

 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 

 therefore 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 again twice at 

 Newton, the mercury stood, on account of the great elevation 

 of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than the baro- 

 meters 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 twenty-seven ; because, in 

 stormy weather, the mercury there will sometimes descend 

 below twenty-eight. 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 



a hard frost sets in. Among many other proofs of the greater dryness 

 of the air in winter, one is afforded by the profusion in which grapes are 

 to be had, at less than twopence a pound, at the corners of every street, 

 up to the end of March, quite free from all mouldiness, though cut full 

 four months, and kept merely by being hung at the top of rooms without 

 afire." ED. 



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