WOOD PIGEON. 161 



'melancholy music' as you 'walk in the fields to meditate,' or 

 lie on some grassy bank in the settled summer time, when 

 all nature has thrown off the mantle that cold had wrapped 

 around her, and again comes forth in her renewed beauty, 

 courting scrutiny in the full blaze of the sun, 'shining in 

 his strength.' 'You may look, and look, and look again,' 

 and in every insect that hovers about you, every overhanging 

 flower, every passing cloud, every murmuring breeze, and the 

 note of every bird, see what you cannot see, and hear what 

 you cannot hear, the hand and the voice of GOD. 



Early in the spring, at sunrise, the Ring Dove cooes to 

 his mate, perched on the same or some neighbouring bough, 

 then mounts in the air, and floats or sails to the top of 

 the nearest tree, or, cooing all the while, will continue rising 

 and falling several times, with a peculiar sort of flight, and 

 when at its greatest elevation flapping the wings together 

 backwards with a distinct sound, audible at some distance 

 on a still day. 



The nest, wide and shallow, placed usually at a height of 

 from sixteen to twenty feet from the ground, is little more 

 than a rude platform of a few crossed sticks and twigs, the 

 largest as the foundation, so thinly laid together that the 

 eggs or young may sometimes be discovered from below. It 

 is often built in woods and plantations, but not unfrequently 

 also in single trees, even those that are close to houses, 

 roads and lanes, the oak and the beech, the fir or any other 

 suitable one, or even in ivy against a wall, rock, or tree, or 

 in a thick bush or shrub in a garden, or an isolated thorn, 

 even in the thick part, so that in flying out in a hurry, if 

 alarmed, many of the loosely-attached feathers are pulled out. 

 One pair built in a spruce fir not ten yards from a garden 

 gate, where they were constantly liable to disturbance by the 

 ringing of the bell, and the passing in and out of the 

 members of the family. Another pair dwelt two years in 

 succession close to a window by a frequented walk, and this, 

 though a cat destroyed the young. 



The eggs, which are delicious eating, are two in number, 

 pure white, and of a rounded oval form; two and sometimes 

 three broods are produced in the season, but the third may 

 possibly be only the consequence of a previous one having 

 been destroyed or prevented: the eggs are hatched in sixteen 

 or seventeen days. The young are fed from the bills of the 

 parent birds with the food previously swallowed, reduced to 

 VOL. iv. M 



