204. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER SE, 
SELBORNE. 
* Behold, the earth beneath her footsteps groans, 
And from the hills the wild ash-trees descend.” 
VIRGIL, 1. iv. 
When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and 
implicit assent, accounts in Baker’s Chronicle of walking hills 
and travelling mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes 
to the credit that was given to such stories with a delicate but 
quaint vein of humor peculiar to the author of the Splendid 
Shilling. 
“I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice 
Of Marcely Hill; the apple no where finds 
A kinder mould: yet ’t is unsafe to trust 
Deceitful ground: who knows but that once more 
This mount may journey, and his present site 
Forsaken, to thy neighbor’s bound transfer 
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 
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 of many of them have slipped and fallen away at 
distant periods, leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems 
to have been the case with Nore and Whetham Hills; and 
especially with the ridge between Harteley Park and Wardle- 
ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and fur- 
rows; 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 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. 
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