NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 125 



ornithologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us per- 

 petually 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 

 domestication, 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 a 

 hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's 

 house-doves in Caernarvonshire ; which, though tempted by plenty 

 of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit 

 their cote for any time; but, as soon as they begin to breed, betake 

 themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young 

 in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns, and precipices of that 

 stupendous promontory. 



li Naturam expellas furca . . . tarn en 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 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 in- 

 crease 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 con- 

 tracted 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 



