14 FERAL PIGEONS [CHAP. i. 



early settlers, either in remote ages, or in a new coun- 

 try, than they can obtain where population is thick and 

 agriculture advanced. A dovecote, planted by the emi- 

 grant close by his hut in the back woods, might often 

 afford a meal when game was shy and scarce, or other 

 stock too valuable to kill. And thus the transfer of the 

 Rock Dove from the home afforded by nature, to the 

 abode reared and provided by man, seems, like the case 

 of bees, to have been a most easy change to effect. 

 We all remember the beautiful passage in Virgil, de- 

 scribing the Pigeon disturbed from her nest in the 

 cavern. We often see how soon ruined buildings, 

 especially windmills, become tenanted by Pigeons, 

 about which it is hard to decide whether they are re- 

 claimed from the cliffs, or are deserters from the dove- 

 cote. A return to this semi-wild state is by no means 

 uncommon in other countries as well as in our own. 

 Mr. Gould informs me that domestic Pigeons are abun- 

 dantly dispersed over every colonized part of Australia ; 

 and in some districts, particularly in Norfolk Island, 

 have taken to the rocks, and quite assumed the habits 

 of the wild Rock Dove of our own island. 



In India, exactly the same half-wild disposition is 

 similarly manifested. Some of the details of Captain 

 Mundy's description of the Black Pagoda or Temple of 

 the Sun, read to us as if he were rummaging the dove- 

 cote of an old manorial residence in England. " My- 

 riads of wild pigeons and bats occupy the dark interior 

 of the lofty cupola. . . . The thunder-threatening 

 closeness of the atmosphere having completely spoiled 

 our imported provisions, in the afternoon we took post 

 on each side of the temple with our guns, and sending 

 in a domestic to drive out the immense flocks of pigeons, 



