CHAP, in.] ORIGINS AND DERIVATIONS. 73 



believe that the Almighty gave to the human race tame 

 creatures to serve and feed it, as designedly as he gave 

 it eyes to see with, and hands to work with. I do not 

 believe that the Dunghill Fowl is derived from the 

 Jungle Cock, the Sheep from the Mouflon, the Dog 

 from the Wolf, or the Runt from the Rock Dove, by any 

 parentage whatever. This is a great heresy ; but philo- 

 sophers will be tolerant, and will not too hastily con- 

 demn the holder of such erroneous opinions to the fag- 

 got and the stake, " for his soul's health." 



Is there any higher authority than Buffon and the 

 French writers, for the assertion that the Blue Rock 

 Dove is actually the source and origin of all the Fancy 

 kinds ? Both in Temminck and in Buffon, the Pigeons 

 are done by a variety of hands, and the accounts in each 

 are contradictory with themselves. In both authors, 

 the Columba lima, as occupying the Dovecotes of the old 

 regime, is well described ; much better than any other 

 species. Buffon says, that in these Dovecotes, contain- 

 ing perhaps hundreds of birds, the occurrence of even a 

 white or albino bird is rare. His account of those Dove- 

 cote Pigeons much reminds us, in its details, of the do- 

 mesticity of Bees*. Have Bees been rendered domestic 

 by man ? or was not their immediate capability for the 



* I remember being asked by a gentleman, whether, if he placed 

 an empty hive in his garden, the Bees that were flying to and fro 

 there, on perceiving the convenience, would enter it one by one, and 

 so congregating, abide and store it with honeycomb : which made 

 me laugh in my sleeve at his small acquirement of natural history. 

 But it would not be so great an absurdity, in a thinly-peopled 

 country, to build a Dove-cote in a site that was as suitable for 

 Pigeons as a garden is for Bees, with the intention that wild Eock 

 Doves should come and tenant it, especially if they were decoyed, in 

 the first instance, by a pair of young birds established there, and by 

 the tempting allurements of a few peas and a little salt. 



