OF SELBOENE 117 



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, cenas Rail, is the last winter 

 bird of passage which appears with us ; and is not seen till 

 towards the end of November : l about twenty years ago they 

 abounded in the district of Selbome ; 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, palumbus 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 un- 

 common 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 Midsummer, and then retained 

 their foliage till very late in the year. 



My musical friend, at whose house 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. 



I am, &c. &c. 



LETTER X. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Aug. i, 1771. 

 DEAR SIR, 



FROM what follows, it will appear that neither owls nor cuckoos 

 keep to one note. A friend remarks that many (most) of his owls 

 hoot in B flat ; but that one went almost half a note below A. 

 The pipe he tried their notes by was a common half-crown 

 pitch-pipe, such as masters use for tuning of harpsichords ; it 

 was the common London pitch. 



A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks 

 that the owls about this village hoot in three different keys, in G 



1 [See note on Letter XLIV. to Pennant.] 



