132 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



seeing it again. Those who have been in the 

 habit of travelling by the short stages or omni- 

 ouses in the neighborhood of London to Hamp- 

 ton and Sunbury, for instance must have ob- 

 served one of these aerial messengers suddenly 

 delivered from its darksome bag and thrown up 

 by one of the " outsides" to find its way home. 



The spiral flight, when the birds are thrown 

 up, is evidently flight of observation, and when they 

 catch sight of any well-know landmark, away they 

 go homeward. But they are lost if no such 

 objects are within ken. Thus pigeons, when 

 loosed from a balloon at a great height, after fly- 

 ing round and round, have returned to the bal- 

 loon for want of objects to guide them in their 

 flight homeward. And yet there is on record a 

 wonderful instance of their return to their domi- 

 cile under circumstances of great difficulty, to say 

 the least of it, as far as guide-marks are con- 

 cerned. 



The battle of Solebay was fought on the 28th 

 of May, 1672. Captain Carleton was a volun- 

 teer on board the London man-of-war in that en- 

 gagement, and he relates that on the first firing 

 of the London's guns, a number of pigeons kept 

 in the ship, and of which the commander was very 

 fond, flew away. Nowhere were they seen near 

 during the fight. It blew a brisk gale next day, 

 and the British fleet was driven some leagues to 

 the southward of the place where the birds for- 

 sook the ship. The day after, back came the 

 pigeons not in one flock, but in small parties of 

 four or five at a time, till all the birds were safe 

 on board. 



This unexpected return caused some conversa- 

 tion on board ; when Sir Edward Sprage told those 

 who expressed their surprise that he brought 

 those pigeons with him from the Straights, and 

 that when he left the Revenge for the London, all 

 those birds, of their own accord, and without the 

 trouble or care of carrying, left the Revenge, and 

 removed with the seamen to the London.* 



Our tame varieties are generally considered, 

 and with good reason, to be derived from the 

 Blue Rock pigeon, or Rockier. f Pennant de- 

 scribes this species as swarming in the Orkneys 

 and Hebrides, and says that in the Orkneys they 

 collect by thousands towards winter, and do "great 

 damage to rick-yards. He saw in Hay, the bot- 

 toms of the great chasms covered with their dung 

 for many feet in thickness, which was drawn 

 up in buckets,' and used successfully as manure. 

 But great as is the facility with which they 

 are domesticated, they occasionally show symp- 

 toms of their original wildness. Pennant knew 

 a dove-cot, not far from Orm's-head, where the 

 pigeons resided, on account of the supply of 

 food, till the breeding season, when liberty and 

 love led them from the artificial pigeon-holes 

 to those wild and vast rocks. 



This species abounds in the rocky islands of 

 the Mediterranean, and was no stranger to Vir- 



* Cnrlftf,n''s Memoirs; and see Yarrell's highly intcrest- 

 ijng British Birds. 

 f Columba livia. 



gil, as the beautiful lines in the fifth ^Eneid* 

 show. 



Even in this vast brick Babylon, some pigeons 

 breed about Somerset House, both on the river 

 and land side. They are probably birds which 

 have been domesticated, and have escaped, pre- 

 ferring a comparatively wild life, with the sup- 

 plies afforded by the wharves and barges. 



The proneness to domestication in this bird, or 

 rather in one of the varieties from it, was strongly 

 contrasted with the impracticability of reconciling 

 the ring-dove, cushat, or wood-pigeon, (Columba 

 palumbus,) to captivity, in Colonel Montagu's ex- 

 periment. It is true that he tamed them within 

 doors, "so as to be exceedingly troublesome ;" 

 but he never could produce a breed, either by 

 themselves or with the tame pigeon. Two were 

 bred up by him, together with a male pigeon, and 

 were so tame as to eat out of the hand ; but the 

 genial spring brought no signs of breeding, so they 

 were suffered to take their liberty in the month of 

 June, by opening the window of the room in which 

 they were confined, the colonel thinking that the 

 pigeon might induce them to return to their usual 

 place of abode, either for food or to roost ; but 

 no ; they instantly took to their natural habits, 

 and the colonel saw them no more. The pigeon 

 continued to return. 



The gouras, it will be remarked, contrary to 

 the general habit of the Columbidae, laid only one 

 egg, and the passenger pigeon, according to Wil- 

 son, lays no more. In 1832, a pair of passengers 

 began a nest on the 25th of April, in a fir-tree 

 planted in one of the enclosures in the garden in 

 the Regent's Park. The hen was the architect, 

 but the cock was the laborer. Most perseveringly 

 did he collect and convey to the selected spot, 

 sticks, straws, and other nest materials. Every time 

 became in with his build ing materials, he alighted 

 on the back of the hen, so as not to disturb any 

 part of the structure which she had finished. On 

 the morning of the 26th, one egg was laid, and the 

 hen immediately began to sit. The cock took his 

 turn at incubation, and when sixteen days had 

 passed, the young bird appeared. 



But if only one egg is laid by the passenger 

 pigeon, the numbers of the species exceed belief, 

 and they afford a most plentiful supply to our 

 Transatlantic cousins. Their roosting-places in 

 those deep and extensive forests exhibit an ex- 

 traordinary spectacle. The dung-covered ground 

 is strewn with the limbs of the trees broken down 

 by their weight ; the grass and underwood are 

 destroyed, and not unfrequently thousands of acres 

 of trees are killed. Upon the discovery of one of 

 these roosts, the whole country comes in to wage 

 war upon the birds during the night, with all 

 sorts of destructive engines ; guns, clubs, long 

 poles, and sulphur-pots, are plied in all directions, 

 till the invaders have filled their sacks and loaded 

 their horses to their hearts' content. 



But the breeding-places are even more exten- 

 sive than the roosts. These, in the states of Ohio, 

 Kentucky, and Indiana, are generally in the back- 



* L. 213, <fec. 



