246 RING-DOVE. 



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 he 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 even- 

 ing, 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 around, 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 

 ringdove, to place them under a pair of doves that were sitting 

 in his own pigeon-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 something 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. 



Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, describes 

 a dove haunting the cavern of a rock, in such engaging 

 numbers, that I cannot refrain from quoting the passage ; and 



* Some old sportsmen say, that the main part of these flocks used to 

 withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. 



