NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 137 



migration ; for as they fare in the winter like their con- 

 geners, 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, JZnas Rail, 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, Palumbus fiaii, 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 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. 



