The Natural History of Selborne

The Hutton Unconformity

• 1792: March 9, 1792 – Much sharp March weather.  Flights of snow, freezing all day.
• 1791: March 9, 1791 – Tapped the new hay-rick: the hay but moderate.
• 1789: March 9, 1789 – Loud thunder at Hinckley in Leicestershire, & lightening that did some damage: it happened in the midst of snow.
• 1785: March 9, 1785 – On this day Mr Charles Etty sailed in the Duke of Montrose India-man, Captain Gray, for Madeira, & Bombay.
• 1774: March 9, 1774 – This was the last day of the wet weather: but the waters were so encreased by this day’s deluge, that most astonishing floods ensued.  This rain & snow, coming on the back of such continual deluges, occasioned a flood in the S. of England beyond anything ever remembered before.  In the night between the 8th and 9th a vast fragment of an hanger in the parish of Hawkely slipped down; & at the same time several fields below were rifted & torn in a wonderful manner: two houses also & a barn were shattered, a road stopped-up, & some trees thrown-down.  50 acres of ground were disordered & damaged by this strange accident.  The turf of some pastures was driven into a sort of waves: in some places the ground sunk into hollows.

Notes:
The landslide mentioned in the 1774 entry is extensively covered in Letter XLV of The Natural History of Selborne:

“I began to suspect that though
our hills may never have journeyed that far, yet 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 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.

Similar ideas about how the landscape changed through time were occurring to White’s contemporary James Hutton; he presented his Concerning the System of the Earth, its Duration, and Stability, which founded the science of geology, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785.