of Selborne 141 



LETTER XVII 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON 



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 re- 

 spectable 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 hirujidines. 



Though I have now travelled the Sussex-downs up- 

 wards 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^ 

 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 

 ll'^orks of the Creafio?i with the utmost satisfaction, and 



' Mr. Comthope, of Danny. 



