PAIRING. 83 



any one \vho will take the trouble, as well as by cir- 

 cumstances mentioned by the very writers just quoted. 

 Aristotle, indeed, though he hints in one place his 

 belief in the common opinion, mentions in another 

 that he had known doves change their mates. The 

 fact, moreover, that these birds are easily enticed 

 from their own dove-cots to others, and thus become 

 lost to their owners, is but too well known to every 

 body who has ever kept them. " Some," says Pliny, 

 " use means to keep pigeons in their dove-house (for 

 otherwise they be birds that love to be ranging and 

 wandering abroad), namely, by slitting and cutting 

 the joints of their wings with some thin sharp piece 

 of gold ; for if you do not so, their wounds will fester 

 and be dangerous. And in very troth, these birds be 

 soon seduced and trained away from their own homes ; 

 and they have a cast with them to flatter and entice 

 one another : they take a great delight to inveigle 

 others, and to steal away some pigeons from their 

 own flocks, and evermore to corne home better 

 accompanied than they went forth*." Now all this is 

 evidently in direct contradiction to what we have 

 quoted from the preceding page of the same work. 

 M. Ray also informed Buffbn, that notwithstanding 

 the reputation of the turtle-dove for conjugal con- 

 stancy, he found the females of those which were 

 confined in voleries living almost promiscuously with 

 the males. Nay, M. Ray asserts that he has observed 

 the wild turtle-doves living in the same mariner on 

 the same tree f. The common opinion, therefore, 

 appears from these circumstances to be manifestly 

 erroneous. 



We meet, however, with instances among other 

 birds of affectionate conjugality well worthy of being 

 recorded; and we shall give one example of this kind, 



* Holland's Plinie, x. 37. 

 f Oiseaux, Art. Tourterelle, 



