I 
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. 1 think they do ; and if they do, whether they wash also. 
The Alauda pratensis of Eay was the poor 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. Royston, 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 
/ 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 Raii, 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, Palumhus 
Raii, 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 n^xt spring. I am, &c. &c. 
LETTEE 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. 
