276 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
only filling tlie Lytlie with tlie 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 
Harteley-h angers, dying away at last among the coppices and 
coverts of Wardleham. It has been remarked before that this 
district is an anathotli, 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 N'ewton Valence. The tu])e was first filled 
here (at Selborne) twice with care, when the mercury agreed 
and stood exactly with my own; but, being filled again twice 
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 it continues to do, be the weight of the 
atmosphere Avhat 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 three hundred feet higher than that in which I am 
writing, instead of two hundred. 
It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at 
Selborne stand three- tenths of an inch below the barometers at 
South Lambeth ; whence we may conclude that the former 
place is about three hundred feet higher than the latter; and 
with good reason, because the streams that rise with us run 
into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London. Of course 
therefore there must be lower ground all the way from Selborne 
to South Lambeth ; the distance between which, all the wind- 
ings and indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less 
than a hundred niilos. 
