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170 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell 

 down, leaving a high free-stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the 

 steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears 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 its 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 its 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 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 earthquake, 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, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, 

 expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered 

 edifices. When daylight 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 versa; 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 its 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 

 pasture-field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward 

 without many fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges 

 resembling graves, lying at right angles to the motion. At the 

 bottom of this enclosure the soil and turf rose many feet against the 

 bodies of some oaks that obstructed their farther course, and terminated 

 this awful commotion. 

 The perpendicular height of the precipice in general is twenty-three 



