222 Bibliographical Notices. 



Or another instance may be selected relating to the rock-dove, 

 vol. ii. p. 13 : — 



" The mention of various places in connexion with this bird induces 

 me to remark, though at the expense of the repetition of a few names, 

 that nearly as the ring-dove and the rock-dove, distributed in suitable 

 localities over the British Islands, are allied, their haunts are very dif- 

 ferent ; the former being associated with the tender and the beautiful, 

 the latter with the stern and the sublime in nature. The ring-dove 

 is most at home in the lordly domain, rich in noble and majestic trees, 

 the accumulated growth of centuries. The stately beech, beautiful 

 even in winter, when with grayish-silver stem it towers upwards from 

 its favourite sloping banks, — richly carpeted in the russet hue of its 

 fallen leaves, — and expands into a graceful head of reddish branches, 

 affords the species nightly shelter. The same tree, too, may have 

 cradled the infant ring-dove ; and when the bird became mature, fed 

 it with its ' mast.' The rock-dove, on the other hand, has its abode 

 in the gloomy caverns both of land and sea. How various are the 

 Scenes — nay, countries and chmates — brought vividly, with all their 

 accompaniments, before the mind, by the sight of this handsome 

 species ! A brief indication of the nature of a very few may here be 

 given ; and in the first place, of two similar in kind, but * yet how 

 different ! ' The most northern great water-fall at which this bird 

 has come under my notice is that of Foyers, in Inverness-shire, where 

 its habitation, 



* Dim-seen through rising mists and ceaseless showers. 

 The hoary cavern, wide- surrounding, lowers.' 



" Over this fall * the evergreen pine ' presides in majesty, and the 

 surrounding scenery partakes of the fine bold character of the * land 

 of the mountain and the flood.* From the banks above, we may, 

 however, in a serene day, gaze across the lengthened expanse of Loch 

 Ness as it sleeps in azure, and over the steep mountain-sides that rise 

 from its margin richly wooded with the graceful weeping birch (the 

 predominant species), the hazel, and other indigenous trees, until the 

 eye rests on the somewhat distant and lofty pyramidal summit of 

 Maelfourvonie. The most southern locality of a similar kind, in 

 which rock- doves attracted my attention, was amid the enchanting 

 scenery of the Sabine hills, about the celebrated cascade of the Anio 

 at Tivoli, where, numerous as domestic pigeons in a well-stocked 

 dove-cot, they appeared flying in and out of the gloomy recesses of the 

 rocks close to where the mass of waters was precipitated. The cliffs 

 above these falls are crowned by the ruins of the Corinthian temple 

 of Vesta ; from the neighbouring hill-sides the great aloe and the 

 myrtle spring spontaneously, while the most antique of olive-trees, 

 many of them even grotesque from the decrepitude of age, form the 

 chief features of the foliage. Afar, over the dreary Campagna, Rome, 

 once mistress of the world, appears. 



" In the snow-white caves adjacent to Dunluce Castle, near the 

 Giant's Causeway, and those darkly pierced in the long range of stu- 

 pendous cliffs at the Horn in Donegal, which boldly confront the At- 



