 Section 14 of Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne. The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White. Letters 59 to 66 to the Honourable Danes Barrington. The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Walmer Forest is not yet all exhausted for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of oak-hanger to a carpenter of this village. This was the butt-end of a small oak, about five feet long and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous and as black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet work by inlaying it along with whiter woods. Those that are match abroad on evenings after it is dark in spring and summer frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing and repeating often a short, quick note. This bird I have remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the stone curlew, Chiradrius edichnemus. Some of them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and north field away down towards Dorton, where among the streams and meadows they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be noisy, their notes often repeated become signals or watch words to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each other in the dark. The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from the foraging of the day and rendezvous by thousands over sell-borne down, where they wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices and making a loud calling, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding, or rather a pleasing murmur very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods or the rushing of the wind in tall trees or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep, beach and woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physical theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers, and yet this child in the much too young to be aware that the scriptures have said of the deity, that he feedeth the ravens who call upon him. I am, et cetera. Letter 60 to the Honourable Danes Barrington. In reading Dr. Huxham's Observaciones de Aire, et cetera, written at Plymouth, I find, by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748 inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great, and that some years it has been very small. For in 1731 the rain measured only 17.266 inches, and in 1741 20.354 inches, and again in 1743 only 20.908 inches. Places near the sea have frequent scuds that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not reach far up into the country, making thus the maritime situations appear wet when the rain is not considerable. In the wettest years at Plymouth the doctor measured only once 36 inches, and again once, that is 1734, 37.114 inches. A quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selbourn in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxham remarks that frequent small rains keep the air moist, while heavy ones render it more dry by beating down the vapours. He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky appearance of the sky in very dry seasons rises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through and render the atmosphere transparent, because he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry, and did never recollect that the air had that look in rainy seasons. My friend who lives just beyond the top of the down brought his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the hangar, supposing that the report would have had a great effect, but the experiment did not answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove on the hangar, when the sound rushing along the lithe and combwood was very grand, but it was at the hermitage that the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers, not only filling the lithe with the roar, as if all the beaches were tearing up by the roots, but turning to the left they pervaded the veil above combwood ponds, and after a pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round heartily hangars, and to die away at last among the coppices and covets of Wardley Ham. It has been remarked before that this district is an anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, and therefore proper for such experiments. We may further 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 Newton Valance. The tube was first filled here at Selbourne, 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 continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as twenty-seven, because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes descend below twenty-eight. 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 Selbourne, 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 Selbourne stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lamberth, 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 Waybridge, and so to London. Of course, therefore, there must be lower ground all the way from Selbourne to South Lamberth, the distance between which all the windings and the indentings of the streams considered cannot be less than a hundred miles. I am, et cetera. Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural history, I shall make no further apology for the four following letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the great frosts, and a few respecting some very hot summers that have distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my observations. As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small time it lasted, the most severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigor and reason of its ravages may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in planting and ornamenting, and may particularly become a work that professes never to lose sight of utility. For the last two or three days of the former year there were considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year more snow succeeded, but from that day the air became entirely clear, and the heat of the sun about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered situations. It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author's evergreens was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night, so that the lorustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked in three or four days as if they had been burnt in the fire, while a neighbour's plantation of the same kind in a high cold situation where the snow was never melted at all remained uninjured. From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation rather than the severity of the cold. Therefore it highly behoves every planter who wishes to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and hopes of years to bestow himself on such emergencies, and if his plantations are small to avail himself of mats, cloths, peas-horm, straw, reeds, or any such covering for a short time, or if his strawberries are extensive to see that his people go about with prongs and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs, since the naked foliage will shift much better for itself than where the snow is partly melted and frozen again. It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox, but doubtless the more tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects, not only for the reason assigned above but also because thus a circumstance they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring and grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason also plants from Siberia will hardly endure our climate because on the very first advances of spring they shoot away and so are cut off by the severe nights of March or April. Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with respect to the more tender shrubs from North America, which they therefore plant under north walls. There should also perhaps be a wall to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from that quarter. This observation might, without any impropriety, be carried into animal life, for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun because such unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers, and by putting their juices into motion too soon subjects them afterwards to inconveniences when rigorous winter returns. The coincidence attending this short but intense frost were that the horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper which injured the winds of many and killed some that colds and coughs were general among the human species, that it froze under people's beds for several nights, that meat was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted and could not be secured but in cellars, that several red wings and thrushes were killed by the frost, and that the large tit-mouse continued to pull straw lengthwise from the eaves of thatched houses and barns in a most adroit manner for a purpose that has been explained already. On the 3rd of January Benjamin Martin's thermometer within doors in a close parlor where there was no fire fell in the night to twenty and on the fourth to eighteen and on the seventh to seventeen point five a degree of cold which the owner never since saw in the same situation and he regrets much that he was not able at that juncture to attend his instrument abroad. All this time the wind continued north and northeast and yet on the eighth roost cocks which had been silent began to sound their clarions and crows to clamour as prognostic of milder weather and moreover moles began to heave and work and a manifest thaw took place. From the latter circumstance we may conclude that thaws often originate underground from warm vapours which arise else how should subterranean animals receive such early intimation of their approach? Moreover we have often observed that cold seems to descend from above for when a thermometer hangs abroad in a frosty night the intervention of a cloud shall immediately raise the mercury ten degrees and a clear sky shall again compel it to descend to its former gauge and here it may be proper to observe on what has been said above that though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular gradation yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension of cold but often take place immediately from intense freezing as men in sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm to the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to withstand accidental severities and not subject themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years yet may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives as it appeared afterwards the Ilexes were much injured the Cypresses were half destroyed the Arbutuses lingered on but never recovered and the bays, lorustines and laurels were killed to the ground and the very wild hollies in hot aspects were so much affected that they cast all their leaves by the 14th of January the snow was entirely gone the turnips emerged not damaged at all save in sunny places the wheat looked delicately and the garden plants were well preserved for snow is the most kindly mantel that infant vegetation can be wrapped in where it's not for that friendly meteor no vegetable life could exist at all in northerly regions yet in Sweden the earth in April is not divested of snow for more than a fortnight before the face of the country is covered with flowers letter 62 to the Honourable Danes Barrington there were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January 1776 so single and striking that a short detail of them may not be unacceptable the most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from my journal which were taken from time to time as things occurred but it may be proper previously to remark that the first week in January was uncommonly wet and drowned with vast rains from every quarter from whence may be inferred as there is great reason to believe is the case that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth is perfectly cluttered and chilled with water and hence dry autums are seldom followed by rigorous winters note the autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet and particularly the month of September during which their fellow at Linden in the county of Rutland six inches and a half of rain and the terrible long frost of 1739 to 40 set in after a rainy season and when the springs were very high end note January the seventh snow driving all the day which was followed by frost sleet and some snow till the twelfth when a prodigious mass overwhelmed all the works of men drifting over the tops of the gates and filling the hollow lanes on the 14th the writers obliged to be much abroad and thinks he never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges through which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes so striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder and pleasure the poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting places for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow that they would soon perish without assistance the hairs also lay sullenly in their seats and would not move until compelled by hunger being conscious poor animals that is the drifts and heaps treacherously betray their footsteps and prove fatal to numbers of them from the 14th the snow continued to increase and began to stop the road wagons and coaches which could no longer keep on their regular stages and especially on the western roads where the fall appears to have been deeper than in the south the company at Bath that wanted to attend the Queen's birthday were strangely incommodated many carriages of persons who got in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough after strange embarrassments here met with the Neplus Ultra the ladies fretted and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel them a track to London but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be removed and so the 18th passed over leaving the company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the castle and other inns on the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost began a circumstance that has been remarked before much in favour of vegetation all this time the cold was not very intense for the thermometer stood at 29 28 25 and there about but on the 21st it descended to 20 the birds now began to be in a very pitiable and starving condition tamed by the season skylarks settled in the streets of towns because they saw the ground was bare rooks frequented dung hills close to houses and crows watched horses as they passed and greedily devoured what dropped from them hares now came into men's gardens and scraping away the snow devoured such plants as they could find on the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a sort of Laplandian scene very wild and grotesque indeed but the metropolis itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the country for being bedded deep in snow the pavement of the streets could not be touched by the wheels or the horses feet so that the carriages ran about without the least noise such an exception from din and clatter was strange but not pleasant it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of desolation ipsa silentia terrent readers note the silence frightening end readers note on the 27th much snow fell all day and in the evening the frost became very intense at south Lambert for the four following nights the thermometer fell to eleven seven six six and at Selborn to seven six ten and on the 31st of January just before sunrise with rhyme on the trees and on the tube of the glass the quick silver sunk exactly to zero being thirty two degrees below the freezing point but by eleven in the morning though in the shade it sprung up to sixteen point five a most unusual degree of cold this for the south of England note at Selborn the cold was greater than at any other place that the author could hear of with certainty though some reported at the time that at a village in Kent the thermometer fell two degrees below zero that is 34 degrees below the freezing point the thermometer used at Selborn was graduated by Benjamin Martin end note during these four nights the cold was so penetrating that it occasioned ice in warm chambers and under beds and in the day the wind was so keen that persons of robust constitutions could scarcely endure to face it the Thames was at once so frozen over both above and below bridge that crowds run about on the ice the streets were now strangely encumbered with snow which crumbled and trod dusty and turning grey resembled bay salt what had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry that from first to last it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the city a longer time than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers living according to all appearances we might now have expected the continuance of this rigorous weather for weeks to come since every night increased in severity but behold without any apparent cause on the first of February a thaw took place and some rain followed before night making good the observation above that frosts often go off as it were at once without any gradual declension of cold on the second of February the thaw persisted and on the third swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting in a courtyard at South Lambeth had felt no frost why the juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not frozen is a matter of curious inquiry severe frosts seem to be partial or to run in currents for at the same juncture as the author was informed by accurate correspondence at Linden in the county of Rutland the thermometer stood at nineteen at Blackburn in Lancashire at nineteen and at Manchester at twenty one twenty and eighteen thus does some unknown circumstance strangely over balance latitude and render the cold sometimes much greater in the southern and in the northern parts of this kingdom the consequences of this severity were that in Hampshire at the melting of the snow the wheat looked well and the turnips came forth little injured the laurels and lorustines were somewhat damaged but only in hot aspects no evergreens were quite destroyed and not half the damage sustained that befell in January seventeen sixty eight those laurels that were a little scorched on the south sides were perfectly untouched on the north sides the care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches seemed greatly to avail the authors evergreens a neighbour's laurel hedge in a high situation and facing to the north was perfectly green and vigorous and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt as to the birds the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed and the partridges by the weather and poachers were so thin that few remained to breed the following year letter sixty three to the honourable Danes Barrington as the frost in December seventeen eighty four was very extraordinary you I trust will not be displeased to hear the particulars and especially and I promise to say no more about the severities of winter after I have finished this letter the first week in December was very wet with the barometer very low on the seventh with the barometer at twenty eight and five tenths came on a vast snow which continued all that day and the next and most part of the following night so that by the morning of the ninth the works of men were quite overwhelmed the lanes filled so as to be impassable and the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting in the evening of the ninth the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer we therefore hung out to one made by Martin and one by Dolland which soon began to show us what we were to expect for by ten o'clock they fell to twenty one and at eleven to four when we went to bed on the tenth in the morning the Quicksilver of Dolland's glass was down to half a degree below zero and that of Martin's which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero sunk quite into the brass guard of the ball so that when the weather became most interesting this was useless on the tenth at eleven at night though the air was perfectly still Dolland's glass went down to one degree below zero this strange severity of the weather made me very desirous to know what degree of cold there might be in such an exalted and near situation as Newton we had therefore on the morning of the tenth written to Mr. Blank and entreated him to hang out his thermometer made by Adams and to pay some attention to it morning and evening expecting wonderful phenomena in so elevated a region at two hundred feet or more above my house but behold on the tenth at eleven at night it was down only to seventeen and the next morning at twenty two when mine was at ten we were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold that we sent one of my glasses up thinking that of Mr. Blank must somehow be wrongly constructed but when the instruments came to be confronted they went exactly together so that for one night at least the cold at Newton was eighteen degrees less than at Selwarn and through the whole frost ten or twelve degrees and when we came to observe consequences we could readily credit this for all my lorustines, bays, ilaxes, arbutuses, cypresses and even my Portugal laurels and which occasions more regret my fine sloping laurel hedge was scorched up while at Newton the same trees have not lost a leaf note Mr. Miller in his gardener's dictionary says positively that the Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 1739-40 so that either that accurate observer was much mistaken or else the frost of December 1784 was much more severe and destructive than that in the year above mentioned end note we had steady frost on to the 25th when the thermometer in the morning was down to ten with us and at Newton only to twenty one strong frost continued till the thirty first when some tendency to thaw was observed and by January the third 1785 the thaw was confirmed and some rain fell a circumstance that I must not admit because it was new to us is that on Friday December the tenth being bright sunshine the air was full of icy spiculae floating in all directions like atoms in a sunbeam let into a dark room we brought them at first particles of the rhyme falling from my tall hedges but were soon convinced to the contrary by making our observations in open places where no rhyme could reach us were they watery particles of the air frozen as they floated or were they evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted we were much obliged to the thermometers for the early information they gave us and hurried our apples, pears, onions potatoes etc into the cellar and warm closets while those who had not or neglected such warnings lost all their stores of roots and fruits and had their very bread and cheese frozen I must not admit to tell you that during those two Siberian days my parlor cat was so electric that had a person stroke her and been properly insulated the shock might have been given to a whole circle of people I forgot to mention before that during the two severe days two men who were tracing hairs in the snow had their feet frozen and two men who were much better employed had their fingers so affected by the frost while they were thrashing in a barn that a mortification followed from which they did not recover for many weeks this frost killed all the furs and most of the ivy and in many places stripped the hollies it came at a very early time of the year before old November ended and yet it may be allowed from its effects to have exceeded any since 1739 to 40 Letter 64 to the Honourable Daines Barrington As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly climate of England where the summers are often so defective in warmth and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well as might be wished I shall be more concise in my account of the severity of a summer season and so make a little amends for the prolix account of the degrees of cold and the inconveniences that we suffered from late rigorous winters the summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot and dry to them therefore I shall turn back in my journals without recurring to any more distant period in the former of these years my peach and nectarine trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on the bodies was scalded and came off since which the trees have been in a decaying state this may prove a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence and shelter their wall trees with mats or boards as they may easily do because such annoyance is seldom of long continuance during that summer also I observed that my apples were coddled as it were on the trees so that they had no quickness of flavour and would not keep in the winter this circumstance put me in mind of what I have heard travellers assert that they never ate a good apple or apricot in the south of Europe where the heats were so great as to render the juices vapid and insipid the great pests of a garden are wasps which destroy all the finer fruits just as they are coming into perfection in 1781 we had none in 1783 there were myriads which would have devoured all the produce of my garden had we not set the boys to take the nests and caught thousands with hazel twigs dipped with bird-lime we have since employed the boys to take and to destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring such expedients have a great effect on these marauders and will keep them under though wasps do not abound but in hot summers yet they do not prevail in every hot summer as I have instanced in the two years above mentioned in the sultry season of 1783 honeydews were so frequent as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden my honeysuckles which were one week the most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could behold became the next the most loathsome being enveloped in a viscous substance and loaded with black aphids or smotherflies the occasion of this clammy appearance seems to be this that in hot weather the effluvure of flowers in fields and meadows and gardens are drawn up in the day by a brisk evaporation and then in the night fall down again with the dews in which they are entangled that the air is strongly scented and therefore impregnated with the particles of flowers in summer weather our senses will inform us and that this clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable kind we may learn from bees to whom it is very grateful and we may be assured that it falls in the night because it is always seen first in the warm still mornings On chalky and sandy soils and in the hot villages about London the thermometer has been often observed to mount as high as 83 or 84 but with us in this hilly and woody district I have hardly ever seen it exceed 80 nor does it often arrive at that pitch the reason I conclude is that our dense clay-y soil so much shaded by trees is not so easily heated through as those above mentioned and besides the mountains cause currents of air and breezes and the vast effluvia from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats Letter 65 to the Honourable Danes Barrington The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one and full of horrible phenomena for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of Europe and even beyond its limits were the most extraordinary appearance unlike anything known within the memory of man by my journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June the 23rd to July the 20th inclusive during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air the sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon and she had a rust-colored ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms but was particularly lurid and blood-colored at rising and setting all the time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic and riding irksome the country people began to look suspicious or at the red, lowering aspect of the sun and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway on this occasion Milton's noble simile of the sun in his first book of Paradise Lost frequently occurred to my mind particularly applicable because towards the end it alludes to a superstitious kind of dread with which the minds of men are always impressed by such strange and unusual phenomena as when the sun and new risen looks through the horizontal misty air shorn of his beams or from behind the moon in dim eclips disastrous twilight sheds on half the nations and with fear of change perplexes monarchs Letter 66 to the Honourable Danes Barrington We are very seldom annoyed with thunderstorms 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 into two and go in part to one of these quarters and in part to the other as was truly the case in summer 1783 when though the country round was continually 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 Nor Hill the Barnett, Butser Hill and Portsdown which somehow diverts the storms and give them a different direction High promontries and elevated grounds have always been observed to attract clouds and disarm them of their mischievous contents which are discharged into the trees and summits as soon as they come in contact with those turbulent meteors while the humble veils escape because they are so far beneath them but when I say I do not remember a thunderstorm from the south I do not mean that we never have suffered from thunderstorms at all for on June the 5th 1784 the thermometer in the morning being at 64 and at noon at 70 the barometer at 29 6 tenths one half 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 common in its appearance at about a quarter after two the storm began in the parish of Hartley moving slowly from north to south and from thence it came over northern farm and so to Grange farm both in this parish it began with vast drops of rain which were soon succeeded by round hail and then by convex pieces of ice which measured three inches in girth had it been as extensive as it was violent and of any continuance for it was very short it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood in the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm but Norton which lay in the centre of the storm was greatly injured as was Grange which lay next to it it did but just reached to the middle of the village where the hail broke my north windows and all my garden lights and handglasses and many of my neighbours windows the extent of the storm was about two miles in length and one in breadth it began to dine but was soon diverted from our repast by the clattering of tiles and the jingling of glass there fell at the same time prodigious torrents of rain on the farms above mentioned which occasioned a flood as violent as it was sudden doing great damage to the meadows and fallows by deluging the one and washing away the soil of the other the hollow lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not to be passable till mended by two hundred weight those that saw the effects which the great hail had on ponds and pools say that the dashing of the water made an extraordinary appearance the froth and spray standing up in the air three feet above the surface the rushing and roaring of the hail as it approached was truly tremendous though the clouds at South Lamberth near London were at that juncture thin and light and no storm was in sight nor within hearing yet the air was strongly electric the bells of an electric machine at that place rang repeatedly and fierce sparks were discharged when I first took the present work in hand I proposed to have added an Annos Historico naturalis or the natural history of the twelve months of the year which would have comprised many incidents and occurrences that have not fallen in my way to be mentioned in my series of letters but as Mr Akin of Warrington has lately published somewhat of this sort and as the length of my correspondence has sufficiently put your patience to the test I shall here take a respectful leave of you and natural history together and am with all due deference and regard your most obliged and most humble servant Gilbert White Selbourne, June the 25th 1787 the end of the natural history of Selbourne by Gilbert White