'Rock-picjeon 



LETTER XLIV. 



To the same. 



SELBORNE, Nov. -$oth, 1780. 



EAR SIR, Every incident that occasions a 

 renewal of our correspondence will ever be 

 pleasing and agreeable to me. 



As to the wild wood-pigeon, the (Enas, or 

 Vinago,ot Ray, 1 1 am much of your mind; and 

 see no reason for making it the origin of the 

 common house-dove: but suppose those that 

 have advanced that opinion may have been misled by another 

 appellation, often given to the (Enas, which is that of stock-dove. 

 Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in 

 manners from itself in summer, no species seems more un- 

 likely to be domesticated, and to make an house-dove. We 

 very rarely see the latter settle on trees at all, nor does it 

 ever haunt the woods : but the former as long as it stays 



1 The whole question of the relation of domesticated pigeons to the wild 

 stocks has been thoroughly investigated by Darwin, to whose classical 

 researches the reader must be referred for more modern information. ED. 



