My remarks are the result of many years' observation;
and are, I trust, true on the whole: though I do not pretend to say
that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer
ought 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 win 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.
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