194 THE NATUEAL HISTOKY 



LETTER XLV. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne. 



" — — — Mugire videbis 



"Sub pedibus terram, et descendere inontibus omos." ' 



When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit 

 assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of walking hills and travelling 

 mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the credit that 

 was given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of 

 humour peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling. 



" I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice 

 "Of Marcley Hill ; the apple no where finds 

 " A kinder mould ; yet 'tis unsafe to trust 

 ' ' Deceitful ground : who knows but that once more 

 " This mount may journey, and his present site 

 ' ' Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 

 " Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 

 " For law debates ! " 



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 befell 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 



' [Virg., ^n., iv., 490-91.] 



