186 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XVII. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



RIKGMEB, near LEWES, Dec. 9, 1773. 

 RECEIVED your last favour just as I was 

 setting out for this place, and aui 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 jiot make many additions, since subjects of this kind 

 are inexhaustible. 



If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respect- 

 able 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 Hirundincs. 



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 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 tht. 

 other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family 1 just at the foot of 

 these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from 

 Plumpton Plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those scapes 



Mr. Courthope, of Danny. G. W. 



