210 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



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 con- 

 siderable part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was 

 torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high freestone 

 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 



