Quid tantùm Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hyberni; vel quæ tardis mora noctibus obstet."

GENTLEMEN who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote science; an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment and a heliotrope.

Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes, the one for the winter, the other for the summer solstice; and these two erections might be constructed with very little expense; for two pieces of timber frame-work, about ten or twelve feet

and turkeys and guinea-fowls, heavy as they are, get up into appletrees; pheasants also, in woods, sleep on trees to avoid foxes; while pea-fowls climb to the tops of the highest trees round their owner's house for security, let the weather be ever so cold or blowing. Partridges, it is true, roost on the ground, not having the faculty of perching; but then the same fear prevails in their minds; for, through apprehension from polecats and stoats, they never trust themselves to coverts, but nestle together in the midst of large fields, far removed from hedges and coppices, which they love to haunt in the day, and where, at that season, they can skulk more secure from the ravages of rapacious birds.

As to ducks and geese, their awkward splay web feet forbid them to settle on trees; they therefore, in the hours of darkness and danger, betake themselves to their own element, the water, where amidst large lakes and pools, like ships riding at anchor, they float the whole night long in peace and security.-WHITE's Observations on Birds.

high, and four feet broad at the base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose.

The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight of some window in the common sitting parlour; because men at the dead season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden or outlet, whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but to place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope to the west of it on the shortest day, and that the whole disc of the sun, at the longest day, might exactly, at setting, also clear the summer heliotrope to the north of it.

By this simple expedient, it would soon appear that there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for from the shortest day, the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its setting, to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day, observe the sun retiring backwards every evening, at its setting, towards the object westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite behind it, and so by degrees to the west of it; for when the sun comes near the summer solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set behind the object; after a time the northern limb would first appear, and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole diameter would set northward of it for about three nights— but on the middle night of the three, sensibly more

remote than the former or following. When beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it would continue more and more to be hidden every night, till at length it would descend quite behind the object again; and so nightly more and more to the westward.

Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos."

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 Cider, alludes to the credit that was given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling.

"I nor advise, nor reprehend, the choice
Of Marclay Hill; the apple nowhere finds
A kinder mould: yet 'tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground: who knows but that, once more,
This mount may journey, and, his present site
Forsaking, to thy neighbour's bounds 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 cf 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 Ward-le-ham, 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 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 that by the end of the latter month the land springs, or levants, began to prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of March also went on in the same tenor, when, in the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high freestone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalkpit. 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 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 position 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 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 unencumbered, but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish had the frag

ment parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in which lived a labourer and his family; and just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by

an old woman, her son, and his wife. These people, in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their kitchen began to heave and part, and that the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack; but they all agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt, only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers.