270 FATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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the Lythe and Combwood, was very grand ; 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 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 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 j™- 

 three hundred feet higher than that in which I am writing^al I 

 instead of two hundred. 



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



