COLUMBINE BIRDS. 71 



animal creation ; * these circumstances, taken in combination 

 with the beauty of the birds, and the gracefulness of their 

 motion on the wing, justify that interest which they never fail 

 to command ; and so to command as that, unless it be for the 

 purposes of the fancier of tame pigeons, there is no need of 

 describing the birds, for everybody learns to know a pigeon 

 almost as soon as to know anything. 



But though the pigeons live more on vegetable food than 

 most of the feathered tribes, they do not live exclusively on 

 it. They eat various kinds of snails, generally shell and all ; 

 and they do so not only when seeds have become scarce in 

 the winter, and they are reduced to beech-mast and other 

 capsuled seeds, which they are unable to break with their 

 bills, but also at the time when they have young. Nor, 

 though they cannot be so well observed then, is there any 

 doubt that the wood species, at the time of the hatching of 

 their spring broods especially, when vegetable food adapted 

 to them is not so abundant, pick up numbers of insects in the 

 woods. The rock species, again, inhabit in vast numbers 

 places where there is little vegetable food. They may be 

 seen alighting in multitudes, and walking about the beaches 

 at low water, ever and anon picking at something ; and 

 though all the species are fond of salt, the probability is that 

 animal food is the chief object sought on the beach. No 

 bird that feeds exclusively on land vegetables takes up its 

 abode on the rocks on the sea-shore, as thereby it would be 

 cutting off half its pasture. 



There are four species of doves found in a wild state in the 

 British islands, though in different localities, and with differ- 

 ences of habit. Two of these, the ring-dove, and the stock- 

 dove, are resident inhabitants of the woods ; one, the rock- 

 dove, is a tenant of the rocks ; and the remaining one is a 

 summer visitant of the woods in certain places only. 

 * Surely this assertion ought to be qualified. M. 



