108 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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. * 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 a 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." 



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 ring-dove, 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 



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

 to withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over." 



