LETTER XLV. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



From what follows, it will appear that neither 

 owls nor cuckoos keep to one note. My musical 

 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 the 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 flat, or F sharp, in B flat 

 and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the 

 one in A flat, and the other in B flat. Do these dif- 

 ferent notes proceed from different species, or only 

 from various individuals? The same person finds 

 upon trial that the note of the cuckoo (of which we 

 have but one species) varies in different individuals; 

 for, about Selborne wood, he found they were mostly 

 in D : he heard two sing together, the one in D, the 

 other in D sharp, which made a disagreeable concert; 

 he afterwards heard one in D sharp, and about Wol- 

 mer Forest some in C.^ As to nightingales, he says 

 that their notes are so short and their transitions so 



* The editor of the edition of 1822 remarks that the cuckoo begins 

 early in the season with a tray or third, next to a fourth, then a fifth, 

 after which his voice breaks without attaining a sixth ; a very old obser- 



166 



