114 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be 
settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on 
trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.* 
You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex ; and 
are informed that they sometimes breed in that country. But why 
did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, 
whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees? If he was not an adroit orni- 
thologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually 
confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove. 
For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that 
house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many 
reasons. In the first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger 
than the common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestica- 
tion, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two 
remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock- 
dove, which are so characteristic of the species, would not, one 
should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed ; but would often 
break out among its descendants. But what is worth an hundred 
arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn’s house- 
doves in Czrnarvonshire ; which, though tempted by plenty of food 
and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their 
cote for any time; but, as soan as they begin to breed, betake 
themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young 
in safety amidst the inacessible caverns and precipices of that 
stupendous promontory. ft 
“‘Naturam expellas furca . . . tamen usque recurret.” 
I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, 
who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen woods 
were much more extensive than at present, the number of wood- 
pigeons was astonishing; that he has often killed near twenty in a 
day : and that with a long wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or 
eight at a time on the wing as they came wheeling over his head: 
he moreover adds, which I was not aware of, that often there were 
among them little parties of small blue doves, which he calls 
* See Letter XX XIX., and note. 
+ It is the white-rumped pigeon, or rock dove, Columba livia, which is the original 
stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abodes of this species is caves and rocky precipices 
on the sea-coast. Although White remarks that the domestic pigeon never settles on trees, 
such is sometimes the case; Mr. Eyton has observed this, and we have frequently seen 
it; at the same time it is by no means the general habit. 
