NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 161 
—_—_— 
LEE ER. oy er 
TO THE SAME. 
RINGMER, near LEWEs, Dec. 9¢/, 1773. 
DEAR SIR,—I received your last favour just as I was setting out 
for this place ; and am pleased to find that my monography imet 
with your approbation. My remarks are the result of many years 
observation ; and are I trust true in the whole, though I do not 
pretend to say that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a 
more nice observer might not make many additions, since subjects 
of this kind are inexhaustible. 
If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society, 
you are at liberty to lay it before them ; and they will consider it, I 
hope, as it was intended, as an humble attempt to promote a more 
minute inquiry into natural history ; 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 hirundines. 
Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty 
years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with 
fresh admiration year by year ; and I think I see new beauties every 
time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester east- 
ward 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 wild, or weald, on 
one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray 
used to visit a family * just at the foot of these hills, and was so 
ravished with the prospect from Plumpton Plain, near Lewes, that 
he mentions those scapes in his “ Wisdom of God in the Works of 
the 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 contemplate these 
* Mr. Courthope of Danny. 
M 
