92 THE NATURAL HISTOEY 



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 inac- 

 cessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory. 



" Naturam expellas furca . . . tamen usque recurret." l 



1 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 rockiers. 2 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. 3 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." 4 



^Hor., Ep. t I., 10, 24.] 



2 [The name suggests rock-pigeons, but they were no doubt stock-doves.] 



3 Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw 

 as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. 



* [Paradist Lost, II., 476-7.] 



