NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
*• 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 
j This mount may journey, and his present site 
i Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 
! Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 
1 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 
I of many of them have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, 
leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems to have been the 
I case with Nore and Whetham Hills ; and especially with the 
ridge between Harteley Park and Wardleham, 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 
I 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 
I that by the end of the latter month the land-springs, or lavants, 
i began to prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable 
i winter of 1764. The begmning of March also went on in the 
i same tenour ; when, in the night between the 8th and 9th of that i 
I month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at Hawk- j 
1 ley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high free- ! 
1 stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a .| 
i 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 j 
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 posi- 
tion 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 i 
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 a hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice 
