OF SELBOBNE. 
167 
ring-dove {PalumhuSj Rati) , 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. 
LETTER X. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selborne, Aug. 1, 1771. 
ROM 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. The pipe he tried their notes by 
was a common half-crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use 
for 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 Gr flat or F sharp, in B flat and A flat. 
have seen pairs throughout the summer and have repeatedly found the 
nest in the neighbourhood of Uppark near Petersfield, which is at no 
great distance from Selborne. — Ed. 
