110 NATURAL HISTORY 



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 re- 

 miges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so character- 

 istic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally 

 lost by it's being reclaimed ; but would often break out among 

 its descendants. But what is worth an hundred arguments is, 

 the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyns 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. 



" r Naturam expellas furca. . . tamen 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 rockier s. 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, 



* [ Columba livia, Bris. There is now no doubt that this is the origin 

 of the domestic pigeon. See Darwin's most remarkable and interesting 

 chapters in his treatise ' Animals and plants under domestication/ vol. i. 

 pp. 131, 221. T. B.] 



