88 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



For my 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 character- 

 istic 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 an hundred arguments is, the instance you give in 

 Sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves in Caernarvonshire ; which, though 

 tempted by 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 fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit 

 their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns, and precipices of 

 that stupendous promontory.* 



" Naturam expellas furc& . . . 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 number- 

 less 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 great part 

 of their support in hard weather ; and the holes they pick in these 

 roots greatly damage the crop. From this food their flesh has 

 contracted a rancidness which occasions them to be rejected by nicer 

 judges of eating, who thought them before a delicate dish. They were 

 shot not only as they were feeding in the fields, and especially in 

 snowy weather, but also at the close of the evening, by men who lay in 

 ambush among the woods and groves to kill them as they came in to 

 roost, f These are the principal circumstances relating to this wonderful 

 internal migration, which with us takes place towards the end of 

 November, and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in 

 Selborne high wood about an hundred of these doves ; but in former 

 times the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district 

 round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like 

 rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus 



* It is the white-rumped pigeon, or rock dove, Columba lima, which is the 

 original stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abodes of this species is caves and 

 rocky precipices on the sea-coast. Although White remarks that the domestic 

 pigeon never settles on trees, such is sometimes the case ; Mr. Eyton has observed 

 this, and we have frequently seen it ; at the same time it is by no means the 

 general habit. 



t "Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw 

 as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over." 



