OF SELBORNE 97 



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, and deposit their young in 

 safety amidst the inaccessible caverns, and precipices of 

 that stupendous promontory. 



"Naturam expellas furca . . . 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 

 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 rockier s. 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 rancid- 

 ness 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 



