The Natural History of Selborne

On this day at 10 in the morning some sober & intelligent people felt at Noar hill what they thought to be a slight shock of an earthquake.  A mother and her son perceived the house to tremble at the same time while one was aboe stairs & the other below; & each called to the other to know what was the matter.   A young man, in the field near, heard a strange rumbling.  Notwithstanding the long severe drought the little pond on the common contains a considerable share of water in spite of evaporation, & the multitude of cattle that drink at it.  Have ponds on such high situations a power, unkown to us, of recruiting from the air? Evaporation is probably less on the tops of hills; but cattle use a vast proportion of the whole stock of water in a small pond.