OF SELBORNE 141 



LETTER XVII 

 TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES HARRINGTON 



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 

 met with your approbation. My remarks are the result 

 of many years' observation ; and are, I trust, true on 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 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 1 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 



1 Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



