IlS WHITE 



I hope they answered your expectation. Royston, or gray 

 crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time 

 with the woodcock; they, like 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 appear- 

 ance in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mis- 

 taken ? 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 ; it is not seen 

 till towards the end of November : 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 are much decreased in number. The ring-dove, Palum- 

 bus Raii, stays with us the whole year, and breeds several 

 times 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 into 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 midsum- 

 mer, and then retained their foliage till very late in the year. 3 



My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has 

 tried all the owls that are his near neighbors with a pitch-pipe 

 set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He 

 will examine the nightingales next spring. 



I am, etc., etc. 

 NOTES 



1 1 have read a like anecdote of a swan. G. W. 



2 I have observed woodcocks sluggish and owl-like in their movements 

 during a continuance of bright cool weather in the autumn, and have attrib- 

 uted it to fatigue after a long flight. G. C. D. 



8 The leaves of a number of currant bushes in my garden were destroyed 

 this spring by a vast number of the caterpillars of the magpie moth, so that 

 the trees were black and apparently lifeless ; yet after midsummer, when the 

 caterpillars had turned into moths, the bushes budded again and were soon 

 in full leaf, but bore no fruit. 



