NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 183 



or trees ? If he was not an adroit ornithologist 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 sup- 

 posing 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 domestication, 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 Mostyrfs house-doves in Carnarvonshire ; 

 which, though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treat- 

 ment, 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 inaccessible caverns and precipices 

 of that stupendous promontory. 2 



" 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 ; 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 



1 I saw plenty of Stock-doves (Columba anas) in the beeches of the Long 

 Lythe at Selborne in October and November of this year (1899). They seemed 

 to be more numerous than the Wood-pigeon. [R. B. S.] 



1 It is the white-rumped pigeon, or rock-dove, Columba livia, which is the 

 original stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abode of this species is in 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. [W. J.] 



