158 T*he Natural History of Selborne 



with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same 

 wild life with the ring-dove, Palumbus torquatus; frequents 

 coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and 

 delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known 

 in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled 

 with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, 

 like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do. 



You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex ; 

 and are informed that they sometimes breed in that country. 

 But why did not your correspondent determine the place of its 

 nidincation, whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees ? If he was not an 

 adroit ornithologist I should doubt the fact, because people with 

 us perpetually confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove. 



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 remiges 

 of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic 

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

 by its 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 Mostyn's 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 [Great Orme's 

 Head], and deposit their young in safety amidst the inacces- 

 sible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory. 1 

 " Naturam expellas furcd .... 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 



1 The "stupendous promontory" of the Great Orme's Head is another 

 excellent example of the eighteenth-century point of view of nature. It is 

 now overrun by visitors from Llandudno, and was at no time a particularly 

 formidable eminence, except to sailors. ED. 



