NATURAL HISTORY OP NUNBURNHOLME. u ; 69 



or goose livers of our own day. If animals individually insignificant are 

 at the same time a delicate viand, when destroyed let them be eaten, or 

 destroyed to be eaten, but when they cannot possibly form a meal, and 

 are only applicable to please an epicure's appetite as a novelty, let them 

 be spared, as such a satisfaction cannot be placed against the taking away 

 of life. 



To apply this to the case before us of the Wood-pigeon. Its great 

 powers of appetite and digestion are too well known to need the above 

 evidence. I have fed domestic pigeons on horse-beans as hard as stones, 

 up to the very bill, and given him a shake to make them rattle, which 

 they did lustily, but certainly next morning he was ready for another 

 meal; and I do not suppose that the wild bird differs in this particular 

 from the tame. Pigeons in America, we have read of with wonder, and 

 there is no reason to doubt the fact, American though it be. Of course 

 we have no such numbers in England, nor, I should think, in| Scotland, 

 but in deep autumn the flocks are very numerous, and I have myself 

 seen, I should say, on two occasions, some eighteen or twenty|thousand 

 in a flock at a moderate computation; but these were rare instances, and 

 the flocks, though very numerous, were usually of not more than forty or 

 fifty birds each, and these performed a regular journey at about seven 

 o'clock in the morning and five in the afternoon, out and in from Windsor 

 Park to some other locality west of it, where I do not know, and many 

 a one fell in passing us; of course we watched for their transit. They 

 were fine birds, and I think, as well as I remember, we sometimes found 

 them filled with beech-nuts and turnip-greens, and sometimes with corn 

 cf various kinds. On the occasion of the transit of the largo flocks I 

 mention, we were so unprepared that three ramrods were broken in no 

 time, in our hurry and trepidation, and from the same cause only two birds 

 fell. Since that time the plantations have grown up over that country, 

 and they breed almost everywhere, so there are no more armies. They 

 are excellent mating, and if destructive must of course be in turn destroyed; 

 but this will seldom hold good as a general proposition, so, when we have 

 had our pie, lean to the side of mercy, say I. 



O. S. POUND. 



Pembroke Square, Kensington, October 22th., 1857. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF NUNBURNHOLME. 



BY THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS. 



"Glory be to God" was the frequent saying of good old Bishop Ken; 

 and with this I will begin, and with this I will end. Abundant recson 

 as will be seen, I have to do so. 



VOL. VII. 2 n 



