144 SUSSEX DOWNS. 



House-martens are distinguished from their congeners by 

 having their legs covered with soft downy feathers down to 

 their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in a pretty, 

 inward, soft manner in their nests. During the time of breed- 

 ing, they are often greatly molested with fleas. 



LETTER LVI. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



RINGMER, near LEWES, December 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 mono- 

 graphy 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, here- 

 after, 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 S.ussex 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 com- 

 mand a noble view of the wold, or weald, on one hand, and 

 the broad downs and sea, on the other. Mr Ray used to 



not be at this moment a vacant acre of ground in our globe, so thickly 

 studded would it have been with the human race, and its surface would 

 have been more then covered by even any one species of animal which is 

 more prolific than man ; the atmosphere would have been a solid mass of 

 insects, and the mighty ocean incapable of containing its tenants. But 

 how differently is every thing ordered, and we behold nothing but 

 harmony of design, and a wise regulation of every object, xvhich Its it 

 for the ends it is destined to fulfil in the scale of being. ED. 



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