176 PBISONEBS AT LARGE. [CHAP. v. 



improve the Collared Turtle to be a Dovehouse Dove 

 at least a two-thousand years' trial has proved unavail- 

 ing. These unyielding limits assigned by the Creator 

 must be acknowledged to have an existence as a rigid 

 law, The correct interpretation of such psychological 

 facts regarding the inferior animals, and their proper 

 inferences, are what it is so desirable, now-a-days, to in- 

 sist on. 



The Collared Turtle, we know, has been intrusted 

 sometimes with a sort of half-liberty the run of a 

 large mansion, or the permission to pop in and out a 

 greenhouse; but which is in reality much about the 

 same degree of licence as would be granted to the five- 

 year-old heir of a noble family : he is just allowed to 

 exercise himself under strict observance. He is not 

 permitted to go abroad on his parole, because people are 

 assured that the parole would not, and could not, with 

 his present thoughtlessness, be kept. And so the Col- 

 lared Turtle is allowed to play at domesticity, but is, all 

 the while, only a jealously- watched captive. The Raso- 

 rial peculiarity of eminent domesticability, as assumed 

 by Mr. Swainson, fails to be apparent in the family of 

 Pigeons, as well as in the true Rasores themselves. 

 Among the many scores, or hundreds, of species com- 

 prised therein, how many of them are truly domestic- 

 able ? My own birds have often got loose in summer 

 time ; and they seemed to think it excellent fun to do 

 so. And then they would go cooing about with short 

 flights from tree to tree, sometimes keeping close at 

 home, sometimes getting out of bounds and losing 

 themselves. The coo answers the purpose of a call- 

 note when the pair are invisible to each other among 

 the branches. It has escaped from Aristotle, in his 



