SUSSEX DOWNS. 157 



LETTER XVII. To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



DEAR SIR, Ringmer, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773. 



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 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 enquiry 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 moun- 

 tains 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* 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 any thing 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 pre- 

 ference 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 analogous to 



* Mr. Courthope, of Dauny. 



