NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 107 



For ray own part, I readily concur with you in supposing 

 that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock- 

 pigeon, for many reasons. In the first place, the wild 

 stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house- 

 dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which 

 generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable 

 black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, 

 which are so characteristic of the species, would not, one 

 should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed, but 

 would often break out among its descendants. But what 

 is worth a hundred arguments is, the instance you give in 

 Sir Eoger Mostyn's house-doves in Csenarvonshire ; which, 

 though tempted by plenty food and gentle treatment, can 

 never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for any time ; 

 but, as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to 

 the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in 

 safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and precipices of 

 that stupendous promontory. 



'• Naturam expellas farca . . . tamen usque recurret." 



I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth 

 year, who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the 

 beechen woods were much more extensive than at present, 

 the number of wood-pigeons was astonishing ; that he has 

 often killed near twenty in a day ; and that with a long 

 wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the 

 wing as they came wheeling over his head : he moreover 

 adds, which I was not aware of, that often there were 

 among them little parties of small blue doves, which he 

 calls rockiers. The food of these numberless emigrants was 

 beech-mast and some acorns ; and particularly barley, which 

 they collected in the stubbles. But of late years, since the 

 vast increase of turnips, that vegetable has furnished a 



