SPECKLED WOOD-PIGEON 159 
Their flight is very powerful and swift, and even birds rising from 
the ground, though they did this with the clatter and noise made by 
all Pigeons when thus rising, seemed to get the pace up extraordinarily 
quickly. 
For the table they seemed to me much the same as the native 
domestic Pigeon, perhaps a little drier and more closely grained in the 
meat. As, however, the birds I shot were wanted as specimens, all 
those eaten were skinned first, and the coating of fat being missing 
from the dish may have affected the flavour one way or the other. 
GrEnus PALUMBUS. 
The genus Palumbus, which contains the true Wood-Pigeons, 
differs from Dendrotreron in external structure much as that genus 
itself differs from Columba. The tail is still longer, proportionately, 
than in Dendrotreron, being about two-thirds the length of the wing, 
and the wing itself is more rounded than in either of the other two 
genera, having the first quill about equal to the fourth. The tarsus, 
also, is shorter and more feathered, and the feet are broader and more 
arboreal in their character than in Columba. 
Outwardly the Wood-Pigeons differ somewhat in type of coloration 
from the Rock-Pigeons, having no wing-bars, though they have a bar 
on the outer feathers of the tail. 
Salvadori, as already noted, placed Blanford’s genera—Columba, 
Dendrotreron, Palumbus, and Alsocomus—in the one genus Columba, 
but the divisions as made by Blanford seem both reasonable and 
convenient, and divisions in classification being primarily made for 
convenience in working, I retain Blanford’s genera. 
In India we have but one species as here restricted, and that in 
fact is but a subspecies of Palumbus palumbus, the European Wood- 
Pigeon. 
