OF SELBOI1NE. Ill 



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. r These are the principal circumstances re- 

 lating 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 Selbome high wood about 

 an 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 sud- 

 denly roused from their roost-trees on an evening, 



" Their rising all at once was like the sound 

 <(l 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 practice 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 own pigeon-house ; hoping thereby, if he could 

 bring about a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his 

 own doves to beat out into the woods and to support them- 

 relves by mast: the plan was plausible, but something always 

 interrupted the success ; for though the birds were usually 

 hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet none ever 

 arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these foundlings in 

 their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely 

 to bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way 

 of menace. In short, they always died, perhaps for want of 

 proper sustenance: but the owner thought that by their fierce 

 and wild demeanour they frighted their foster-mothers, and so 

 were starved. 



Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, describes 



r Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to 

 withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. 

 * [See the note at page 96. T. B.] 



