OF SELBORNE. 138 



pigeon, for many reasons. 1 In the first place, the wild 

 stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house- 

 dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which gene- 

 rally 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. 2 But what 

 is worth a 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 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 

 wildfowl 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. 3 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 



1 This is now the generally received opinion, although formerly 

 naturalists, misled by the signification of the word " stock," regarded 

 the stock-dove as the progenitor of all the domestic breeds. ED. 



2 A good argument, as illustrated by the fact that the two conspicuous 

 black bars on the wing of the rock-dove may be observed in many 

 individuals of the numerous domestic varieties. The fact also of, the 

 dove-cot pigeon never perching upon trees affords another proof of its 

 relationship with the rock-dove, and not with the stock-dove. ED. 



3 Although called "rockiers," these "small blue doves" must have 

 been stock-doves. ED. 



