SUSSEX DOWNS. 
LETTER XVII. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
DEAR SIR, Ringmer, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773. 
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 wiU 
consider it, I hope, as it was intended, as a humble attempt to 
promote a more minute enquiry 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 moun- 
tains 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* 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 any thing 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 pre- 
ference 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 
* Mr. Coiirthope, of Danny, 
