House-martens are distinguished from their congeners by having their legs covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in a pretty, inward, soft manner in their nests. During the time of breeding, they are often greatly molested with fleas.

LETTER LVI.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

RINGMER, near LEWES, December 9, 1773. DEAR SIR,-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 on 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 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, here after, 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 I 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 wold, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea, on the other. Mr Ray used to

not be at this moment a vacant acre of ground in our globe, so thickly studded would it have been with the human race, and its surface would have been more than covered by even any one species of animal which is more prolific than man; the atmosphere would have been a solid mass of insects, and the mighty ocean incapable of containing its tenants. how diferently is every thing ordered, and we behold nothing but harmony of design, and a wise regulation of every object, which fits it for the ends it is destined to fulfil in the scale of being.-ED,

But

visit a family* just at the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from Plympton-plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those capes 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 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, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expansion; or, was there ever a time when these immense masses of calcareous matter were thrown into

fermentation by some adventitious moisture, -were raised and leavened into such shapes, by some plastic power, and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild below?

By what I can guess, from the admeasurements of the hills that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills surmount the wild, at an average, at about the rate of five hundred feet.

One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep: from the westward, till you get to the river Adur, all the flocks have horns, and smooth white faces, and white legs; and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen. But as soon as you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding-hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep; and have, moreover, black faces, with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs: so that, you would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated breed of his son-in-law, Jacob, were cantoned along on the other. And this diversity holds good respectively on each side, from the valley of Bramber and Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has been so from time immemorial; and smile at your simplicity if you ask them, whether the

* Mr Courthope, of Danny.

K

situation of these two different breeds might not be reversed? (However, an intelligent friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; and has, this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced parcel of blackfaced hornless rams among his horned western ewes.) The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest wool.*

As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a lookout as possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of migration; and yet, no doubt, are often found in a torpid state: but redstarts, nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, &c. &c. are very ill provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I ever heard of, in a torpid state, and yet can never be supposed, in such troops, from year to year, to dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and inquisitive, which, from day to day, discern the other small birds that are known to abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw nothing like a summer bird of passage; and what is more strange, not one wheatear, though they abound

There are ten or twelve distinct varieties of the common sheep, which will all breed with each other. In the mountainous districts of Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland, the kind preferred is the small, horned, black-faced breed, remarkable for the very fine flavour of its flesh. There are four distinct species; the bearded sheep of Barbary, the argali, which ranges the mountains and steeps of Northern Asia, the American argali, which inhabits Canada, and the musmon of Corsica and Sardinia. With regard to colour, Southey, in his Letters from Spain, says, the sheep of that peninsula are nearly all black. Geraldus Cambrensis informs us that the Irish in his time were usually clothed in black habiliments, made from wool which did not require dying. Much has been done within the last century to improve the breed in Ireland, but still, in many districts, black sheep are numerous. The cloth peculiar to Scotland, called hodden grey, was a manufacture from the natural fleece; and throughout the domestic farming districts, the housewives still use their influence to have one black lamb retained among the flock, as the wool takes on the dye more kindly and is indeed often spun into thread for the stockings of the family, without receiving any artificial tinge. Individuals with a black covering are very common in black-faced flocks, and occasionally occur among the Cheviot breed.

ED.

situation of these two different breeds might not be reversed? (However, an intelligent friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; and has, this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel of blackfaced hornless rams among his horned western ewes.) The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest wool.*

As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a lookout as possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of migration; and yet, no doubt, are often found in a torpid state: but redstarts, nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, &c. &c. are very ill provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I ever heard of, in a torpid state, and yet can never be supposed, in such troops, from year to year, to dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and inquisitive, which, from day to day, discern the other small birds that are known to abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw nothing like a summer bird of passage; and what is more strange, not one wheatear, though they abound

There are ten or twelve distinct varieties of the common sheep, which will all breed with each other. In the mountainous districts of Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland, the kind preferred is the small, horned, black-faced breed, remarkable for the very fine flavour of its flesh. There are four distinct species; the bearded sheep of Barbary, the argali, which ranges the mountains and steeps of Northern Asia, the Ainerican argali, which inhabits Canada, and the musmon of Corsica and Sardinia. With regard to colour, Southey, in his Letters from Spain, says, the sheep of that peninsula are nearly all black. Geraldus Cambrensis informs us that the Irish in his time were usually clothed in black habiliments, made from wool which did not require dying. Much has been done within the last century to improve the breed in Ireland, but still, in many districts, black sheep are numerous. The cloth peculiar to Scotland, called hodden grey, was a manufacture from the natural fleece; and throughout the domestic farming districts, the housewives still use their influence to have one black lamb retained among the flock, as the wool takes on the dye more kindly and is indeed often spun into thread for the stockings of the family, without receiving any artificial tinge. Individuals with a black covering are very common in black-faced flocks, and occasionally occur among the Cheviot breed. — -ED.