NA TURAL HIS TOR Y OF SELB ORNE. 1 6 1 



LETTER XVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



RTNGMER, near LEWES, Dec. gtn, 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 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, 







