OF SELBORNE. 191 



plenty of 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 fast- 

 nesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young 

 in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns 

 and precipices of that stupendous pro- 

 montory. 



" Naturam expellas furca . . . 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 wheel- 

 ing 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 



