RINGMER, near LEWES, _Dec._ 9_th_, 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 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 will consider it, I hope,
as it was intended, as a 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 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 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 anything 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
dilation 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 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 black-faced
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 look-out 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, etc., 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
wheat-ear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a considerable
perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and though many are to be
seen to my knowledge all the winter through in many parts of the south of
England. The most intelligent shepherds tell me that some few of these
birds appear on the downs in March, and then withdraw to breed probably
in warrens and stone-quarries: now and then a nest is ploughed up in a
fallow on the downs under a furrow, but it is thought a rarity. At the
time of wheat-harvest they begin to be taken in great numbers; are sent
for sale in vast quantities to Brightelmstone and Tunbridge; and appear
at the tables of all the gentry that entertain with any degree of
elegance. About Michaelmas they retire and are seen no more till March.
Though the birds are, when in season, in great plenty on the south downs
round Lewes, yet at East Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of those
downs, they abound much more. One thing is very remarkable, that though
in the height of the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet
they never are seen to flock; and it is a rare thing to see more than
three or four at a time; so that there must be a perpetual flitting and
constant progressive succession. It does not appear that any wheat-ears
are taken to the westward of Houghton Bridge, which stands on the river
Arun.
I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of
ring-ousels, and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to
this season of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of
October all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any
shrubs and covert: but not one bird of this sort came within my
observation. I only saw a few larks and whin-chats, some rooks, and
several kites and buzzards.
About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills comes to the pine-groves about
this house, but never makes any long stay.
The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still
continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the 20th
November, and came out again for one day on the 30th: it lies now buried
in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped
at present in mud and mire!
Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem
to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest part of
the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. These rooks retire
every evening all the winter from this rookery, where they only call by
the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods: at the dawn of day
they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a
flight of daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.