OF SELBORNE. 
247 
confufion as cannot be accounted for from any other caufc. 
A ftrange event, that happened not long fince, juftifies our fuf- 
picions ; which, though it befell not within the limits of this 
parifh, yet as it was within the hundred of Selhrne, and as the 
circumftances were fingular, may fairly claim a place in a work 
of this nature. 
The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were re- 
markable for great melting fnows and vaft gluts of rain ; fo that by 
the end of the latter month the land-fprings, or lavants, began to 
prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. 
The beginning of March alfo went on in the fame tenor; when, 
in the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, a confiderable 
part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from it's 
place, and fell down, leaving a high free-ftone cliff naked and 
bare, and refembling the ftcep fide of a chalk-pit. It appears 
that this huge fragment, being perhaps fapped and undermined 
by waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in a per- 
pendicular diredion ; for a gate which flood in the field, on the 
top of the hill, after finking with it's pods for thirty or forty 
feet, remained in fo true and upright a pofition as to open and 
fhut with great exadnefs, jufl as in it's firfl fituation. Several 
oaks alfo are flill flanding, and in a flate of vegetation, after 
taking the fame defperate leap. That great part of this prodi- 
gious mafs was abforbed in fome gulf below, is plain alfo from 
the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and 
unincumbered ; but would have been buried in heaps of rubbifh, 
had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About an hundred 
yards from the foot of this hanging coppice flood a cottage by 
the fide of a lane ; and two hundred yards lower, on the other 
fide of the lane, was a farm-houfe, in which lived a labourer and 
his 
