OF SELBORNE. 65 



melting snows and vast gluts of rain ; so 

 that by the end of the latter month the 

 land-springs, or lamnts, 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 considerable part 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 resem- 

 bling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It ap- 

 pears that this huge fragment, being per- 

 haps 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 up- 

 right 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 



VOL. II. F 



