162 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



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 hirundines. 



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 f 

 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 pecu- 

 liarly 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, 



* The Society of Antiquaries, 

 t Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



