8o NETHER LOCHABER. 



show, it that when full-grown it will take the first opportunity that 

 offers to escape into its native wild woods, never more to look near 

 you. One that we reared from the nest several years ago had one 

 very amusing habit. Every morning after being fed he would 

 watch the nursery door, which opened off the kitchen, until he got 

 it ajar, when he would leap upon the dressing-table and spend a 

 couple of hours in admiring himself in the looking-glass, preening 

 his feathers and strutting about and kur-dooing to his alter ego with 

 the most beauish, self-satisfied air imaginable, the poor bird being 

 evidently under the impression that his own reflection was a 

 Mademoiselle Eing-dove of irresistible attractions, and whom he 

 persuaded himself he was on these occasions busily courting in 

 the manner most approved of amongst the most fashionable circles of 

 ring-dovedom. His death was a singular one. A large Aylesbury 

 duck, with whom he used to have constant quarrels, he being 

 invariably in fault and always the aggressor, got a hold of him one 

 day near her ducking pond, and in a scuffle, which the ring-dove 

 himself had causelessly provoked, dragged him into the water, and 

 beat him with her wings until he was, like Ophelia, " drown'd, 

 drown' d." 



We never see these very handsome wild birds, or hear their soft 

 melodious cooing of summer eve from the neighbouring woods, but 

 we think of Shenstone's beautiful lines 



" I have found out a gift for my fair : 



I have found where the wood-pigeons breed ; 

 But let me that plunder forbear, 



She will say 'twas a barbarous deed : 

 For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd, 



Who could rob a poor bird of its young ; 

 And I lov'd her the more when I heard 



Such tenderness fall from her tongue. 



" I have heard her with sweetness unfold 



How that pity was due to & dove ; 

 That it ever attended the bold, 

 And she called it the Sister of Love. 



