BtSSEX DOWNS. 171 



If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respect- 

 able Society, you are at liberty to lay it before them ; and 

 they will consider it, I hope, as it was intended, as a humble 

 attempt to promote a more minute inquiry into natural 

 histor>% — into the life and conversation of animals. Perhaps, 

 hereafter, I may be induced to take the house- swallow under 

 consideration ; and from that proceed to the rest of the 

 British hiriindines. 



Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards 

 of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic 

 mountains "U'ith fresh admiration year by year ; and I think 

 I see new beauties every time I traverse it. The range, 

 which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, 

 is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, 

 properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along, 

 you command a noble view of the wold, or weald, on one 

 hand, and the broad downs and sea, on the other. Mr. Eay 

 used to visit a family* just at the foot of these hills, and was 

 so ra\'ished with the prospect from Plympton-plain, near 

 Lewes, that he mentions those capes in his Wisdom of God 

 in the Works of Creation, with the utmost satisfaction, and 

 thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest 

 parts of Europe. 



For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly 

 sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk 

 hills, in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, 

 broken, abrupt, and shapeless. 



Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so 

 happy as to convey to you the same idea, but I never con- 

 template these mountains without thinking I perceive some- 

 what analogous to growth in their gentle swellmgs and 

 smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and 

 regular hollo vvs and slopes, that carry at once the air of vege- 

 tative dilatation and expansion ; or, was there ever a time 

 when these immense masses of calcareous matter were 

 thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture, — 

 were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic 

 power, and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into 

 tlie sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild 

 below ? 



* Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



