166 NATURAL HISTORY 



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. 

 Royston, or gray 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 migra- 

 tion, 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 ? Did he not find a missel- 

 thrush's nest, and take it for the nest of a fieldfare ? 



The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon 1 ((Enas, RAII), 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 Sclborne, 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 



Thomas Allis states, not further. Along the line thus sketched out, 

 and immediately to the east and south of it, the appearance of the 

 nightingale, even if regular, is in most cases rare, and the bird local ; 

 but further away from the boundary it occurs yearly with great regu- 

 larity in every county, and in some places is very numerous. Mr. More 

 states that it is * thought to have once bred near Sunderland,' and it is 

 said to have been once heard in Westmoreland and also in the summer 

 of 1808 near Carlisle; but these assertions must be looked upon with 

 great suspicion, particularly the last, which rests on anonymous 

 authority only. Still more open to doubt are the statements of the 

 nightingale's occurrence in Scotland, such as Mr. Duncan's (not on his 

 own evidence, be it remarked), published by Macgillivray ('British Birds,' 

 ii. p. 334) respecting a pair believed to have visited Calder Wood in 

 Mid Lothian in 1826; or Mr. Turnbull's ('Birds of East Lothian,' 

 p. 39), of its being heard near Dalrneny Park, in the same county, in 

 June, 1839. In Ireland there is no trace of this species." On the 

 continent it may be observed that the nightingale has not been met with 

 further north than Funcn in Denmark, and the neighbourhood of 

 Copenhagen. ED. 



1 The name wood- pigeon is generally applied to the ring-dove, Co- 

 lumba palumbus. ED. 



2 This subject has been already noticed in Letter XLIV. to Pen- 

 nant. The stock-dove breeds in parts of Hants and Sussex, although 

 doubtless it is most numerous in these counties in winter. We 



