XC1V.] OF SELBORNE. 255 



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 



WOOD-PIGF.OX'S EGO. 



migration, which with us takes place towards the end of Novem- 

 ber, 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 

 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 prac- 

 tice, 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 



