120 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 breeding they are often greatly molested with fleas. 



T am, &c. 



LETTER XVII, 



TO THE SAME. 



RINGMEB, near LHWES, Dec. Qth, 1773. 



DEAK 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 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 t 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 satis- 

 faction, 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 mountains 

 without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their 

 gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, 



* And a sepal-ate genus has been made for it in consequence, which is adopted 

 by some ornithologists. f ^ r - Courthope of Danny. 



