NA TURAL HIS TOR Y OF SELBORtfE. 



rockiers. 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 rancidness 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 groves to kill them as they came in to roost* These are 

 the principal circumstances relating to this wonderful internal 

 migration, which with us takes place towards the end of November, 

 and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in Selborne 

 high wood about an hundred of these doves ; but in former 

 times the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district 

 round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like 

 rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus 

 rendezvoused here by thousands, if they happened to be suddenly 

 roused from their roost-trees on an evening, 



" Their rising all at once was like the sound 

 Of thunder heard remote." - 



It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to add, that 

 I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a practice, for 

 a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place 

 them under a pair of doves that were sitting in his own pige on- 

 house ; hoping thereby, if he could bring about a coalition, to enlarge 

 his breed, and teach his own doves to beat out into the woods and 

 to support themselves by mast : the plan was plausible, but some- 

 thing always interrupted the success ; for though the birds were 

 usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet none 

 ever arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these foundlings in 

 their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to 

 bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of menace. 

 In short, they always died, perhaps for want of proper sustenance : 

 but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour they 

 frighted their foster-mothers, and so were starved. 



* " Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flacks used to withdraw as soon 

 as the heavy Christmas frosts were over." 



