OF SELBORNE. 173 
the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason 
for migration; for, as they fare in the winter like 
their congeners, so might they, in all appearance, 
in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, 
mistaken? Did he not find a missel-thrush’s nest, 
and take it for the nest of a fieldfare? 
The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, enas, Raii, is 
the last winter bird of passage which appears with 
us, and is not seen till towards the end of Novem- 
ber. About twenty years ago they abounded in the 
district of Selborne, and strings of them were seen, 
morning and evening, that reached a mile or more ; 
but since the beechen woods have been greatly 
thinned, they have much decreased in number. 
The ring-dove, palumbus, Raii, stays with us the 
whole year, and has several broods through the 
summer. 
Before I received your letter of October last, I 
had just remarked in my journal that the trees were 
unusually green. This uncommon verdure lasted 
on late in November, and may be accounted for 
from a late spring, a cool and moist summer, but 
more particularly from vast armies of chafers or 
tree-beetles, which in many places reduced whole 
woods to a leafless, naked state. ‘These trees shot 
again at midsummer, and then retained their foliage 
till very late in the year. 
My musical friend, at whose house [Fyfield, 
near Andover] I am now visiting, has tried all the 
owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe 
set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. 
He will examine the nightingales next spring. 
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