142 THE 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 grey crows, are winter birds 

 that come much about the same time with the wood- 

 cock : 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 appear- 

 ance 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, oenas Rati, 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 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 



