18G 
NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTER XVII. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
RiNGMER, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773. 
EECEIVED 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 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 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 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 thfe 
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 
Mr. Courthope, of Danny. — G. VV 
