NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 115 
rockiers. The food of these numberless emigrants was beech-mast 
and some acorns ; and particularly barley, which they collected in 
the stubbles. But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips, 
that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard 
weather ; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the 
crop. From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which 
occasions them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought 
them before a delicate dish. They were shot not only as they were 
feeding in the fields, and especially in snowy weather, but also at 
the close of the evening, by men who lay in ambush among the 
woods and groves to kill them as they came in to roost.* These are 
the principal circumstances relating to this wonderful internal 
migration, which with us takes place towards the end of November, 
and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in Selborne 
high wood about an hundred of these doves; but in former 
times the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district 
round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like 
rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus 
rendezvoused here by thousands, if they happened to be suddenly 
roused from their roost-trees on an evening, 
‘** Their rising all at once was like the sound 
Of thunder heard remote.’?—— 
It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to add, that 
I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a practice, for 
a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place 
them under a pair of doves that were sitting in his own pigeon- 
house ; hoping thereby, if he could bring about a coalition, to enlarge 
his breed, and teach his own doves to beat out into the woods and 
to support themselves by mast: the plan was plausible, but some- 
thing always interrupted the success; for though the birds were 
usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet none 
ever arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these foundlings in 
their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to 
bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of menace. 
In short, they always died, perhaps for want of proper sustenance : 
but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour they 
frighted their foster-mothers, and so were starved. 
* Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw as soon 
as the heavy Christmas frosts were over.’’ 
