114 tfATtfRAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be 

 settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on 

 trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.* 



You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex ; and 

 are informed that they sometimes breed in that country. But why 

 did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, 

 whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees ? If he was not an adroit orni- 

 thologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually 

 confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove. 



For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that 

 house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-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 domestica- 

 tion, 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 inacessible caverns and precipices of that 

 stupendous promontory, f 



" 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 j 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 



* See Letter XXXIX., and note. 



t It is the white-rumped pigeon, or rock dove, Coluitiba livia, which is the original 

 stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abodes of this species is caves and rocky precipices 

 on the sea-coast. Although White remarks that the domestic pigeon never settles on trees, 

 such is sometimes the case ; Mr. Eyton has observed this, and we have frequently seen 

 it ; at the same time it is by no means the general habit. 



