MIGRATING BIRDS. 165 



is the last winter bird of passage which appears 

 with us, and 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 have 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 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 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. 



X. 



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 com- 

 mon half- crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use for 

 tuning of harpsichords ; it was the common Lon- 

 don pitch. 



