348 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



domesticated till long after a period of commensal 

 existence ; at any rate in the East, the true wild 

 Blue-rock of the Eastern race intermedia without 

 the white patch on the back, is still found breeding 

 not only in ruins, but in inhabited houses and in 

 the sides of wells. A wonderful bird is this familiar 

 creature, with an iron constitution which enables 

 it to bear any climate from the Shetlands to Bur- 

 mah, and to live on any food, from the scanty 

 herbage of the cliffs to scraps of man's food found 

 in our streets ; near my lodgings I often see Pigeons 

 picking even at bones and suet. 



Indeed, if, as I suppose we ought, we look on 

 man as part of nature, the Rock-Pigeon can claim 

 to have beaten even the Turnstone, for it is probably 

 far more numerous than that bird, now that man 

 has added to its enormous natural range by taking 

 it all over the world where the white race settles 

 or trades. Only one other Pigeon has been domesti- 

 cated, the pretty Collared Dove, a North-east 

 African bird, which has varied but little, and yet 

 retains a wonderful swiftness of flight when re- 

 stored to liberty, in spite of a domestication of 

 unknown date. 



The Game-birds, however, have yielded the 

 greatest number of domestic species, the Fowl 

 being so familiar that, as Blyth pointed out, it has 

 no name, " fowl " being simply Old English for 

 " bird/* and it is certainly at present the most 

 important species to man. The Turkey, however, 

 supplied its place with the aborigines of Mexico, 



