442 OBSERVATIONS ON 



FOOD FOR THE RING-DOVE. 



ONE of ray neighbours shot a ring-dove on an evening 

 as it was returning from feed and going to roost. When 

 his wife had picked and drawn it, she found its craw 



lately shot nine in two adjoining fields; but I never saw them in any 

 other season than the autumn. 



That it is a bird of passage there can be little doubt, though Mr. White 

 thinks it poorly qualified for migration, on account of the wings being 

 short, and not placed in the exact centre of gravity : how that may be I 

 cannot say, but I know that its heavy sluggish flight is not owing to its 

 inability of flying faster, for I have seen it fly very swiftly, although in 

 general its actions are sluggish. Its unwillingness to rise proceeds, I 

 imagine, from its sluggish disposition, and its great timidity, for it will 

 sometimes squat so close to the ground as to suffer itself to be taken up 

 by the hand, rather than rise ; and yet it will at times run very fast *. 



What Mr. White remarks respecting the small shell snails found in its 



* It occurred to me many years ago to be shooting in September with 

 Mr. Webb, tenant of Church Farm in East Woodhay, who had the depu- 

 tation of the manor from my father. I had just asked him whether he 

 ever found quails in that quarter ; to which he replied, that he had not 

 seen one in the parish in his whole life. We were then in a large wheat 

 stubble which sloped towards us from the down-hill, of which it and the 

 adjoining fields formed the base, and I was walking with my body stooped 

 forwards, and my gun held with my two hands behind my back, the day 

 being hot and the ascent of the ground gradual. Another word had not 

 been spoken between us, when he called out " What is the matter?" on 

 seeing me throw myself suddenly forward on the ground ; to which I 

 answered, " Nothing, but I have caught a quail :" and the fact was so, 

 my inclined posture having enabled me to descry a solitary quail sitting 

 close in the stubble before my feet. The bird was taken home and pini- 

 oned ; and it lived for many years at Highclere in a walled garden with 

 some gold pheasants that were kept by my mother. I had the greatest 

 difficulty, and perhaps did not quite succeed, in persuading my companion 

 that the bird had not been previously concealed in my pocket, and brought 

 forth to astonish him. When we consider how many millions of chances 

 there must have been against our finding a quail in a parish where one 

 had not been observed for half a century, and that, almost instantaneously, 

 after the inquiry had been made and negatived ; against the bird's being 

 at that very moment within a few yards in the precise line in which I was 

 advancing ; against its lying still without attempting to escape, and my 

 being enabled, as both my hands were at the moment occupied, to secure 

 it : it is impossible not to reflect, that, had such an occurrence taken place 

 with relation to any circumstance of importance to the affairs of mankind, 

 instead of one so absolutely insignificant, it must have assumed the 



