EIKG-DOVES. 267 



betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit 

 their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and 

 precipices of that stupendous promontory. 



" Naturam expellas furca . . tamen usque recurret." 

 Nature, expelled by force, will still return. 



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 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 increase of tur- 

 nips, that vegetable has furnished a great part of their sup- 

 port 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 a hundred of 

 these doves ; but in former times the flocks were so vast, not 

 only with us, but all the district around, that on mornings 

 and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, in strings, 



* Some old sportsmen say, that the main part of these flocks used to with- 

 draw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. 



In the woods and coppices in some of the remote parts of Breconshire, 

 T have seen vast flocks of the wood-pigeon. They are excellent eating before 

 they feed on turnips ED. 



