THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 249 
LETTER LXI. 
We are very seldom annoyed with thunder-storms ; and it is 
no less remarkable than true, that those which arise in the 
south have hardly been known to reach this village ; for, 
before they get over us, they take a direction to the east or 
to the west, or sometimes divide in two, go in part to one of 
those quarters, and in part to the other; as was truly the case 
in summer 178%, when, though the country round was con- 
tinually harassed with tempests, and often from the south, yet 
we escaped them all, as appears by my journal of that summer. 
The only way that I can at all account for this fact — for such 
it is —is that, on that quarter, between us and the sea, there 
are continual mountains, hill behind hill, such as Nore Hill, 
_ the Barnet, Butser Hill, and Portsdown, which somehow divert 
the storms, and give them a different direction. High prom- 
ontories, and elevated grounds, have always been observed 
to attract clouds and disarm them of their mischievous con- 
tents, which are discharged into the,trees and summits as soon 
as they come in contact with those turbulent meteors; while 
the humble vales escape, because they are not so far beneath 
them. 
But, when I say I do not remember a thunder-storm from 
the south, I do not mean that we never have suffered from 
thunder-storms at all ; for on June sth, 1784, the thermometer 
in the morning being at 64°, and at noon at 70°, the barom- 
eter at 29.6%4° and the wind north, I observed a blue mist, 
smelling strongly of sulphur, hanging along our sloping woods, 
and seeming to indicate that thunder was at hand. I was 
called in about two in the afternoon, and so missed seeing 
the gathering of the clouds in the north; which they who 
were abroad assured me had something uncommon in its 
1 Cowper alludes to this terrible summer of 1783 in his Zask (Book I1). 
