108 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland, 

 but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In those 

 two last counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to the want of 

 warmth ; the defect in the west is rather a presumptive argument that 

 these birds come over to us from the continent at the narrowest passage, 

 and do not stroll so far westward. 



Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do not 

 dust. I think they do ; and if they do, whether they wash also. 



The Alauda pratensis of Eay was the pr dupe that was educating 

 the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last. 



Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ousel for 

 Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to 

 get him one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that 

 you and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope they 

 answered your expectation. Eoyston, or grey 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 

 appearance in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken 1 

 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 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 

 Rail, 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 nightin- 

 gales next spring. I am, &c. &c. 



LETTER X. - 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, Aug. 1st, 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. 



