160 T^he Natural "History of Selborne 



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 rockiers. 

 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, 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 migration, which with us takes place 

 towards the end of November, and ceases early in the spring. 

 Last winter we had in Selborne 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 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 practice, for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs 

 of a ring-dove, to place them under a pair of doves that were 



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

 withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. 



