134 WHITE 



LETTER XVII 



RINGMER, near LEWES, Dec. gth, 1773. 



DEAR SIR, I received your last favor just as I was setting 

 out for this place ; and am pleased to find that my monog- 

 raphy met with your approbation. My remarks are the re- 

 sult 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 a 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 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 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 Crea- 

 tion " with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to 

 anything he has 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 mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analo- 



