134 NATURAL HISTORY 



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. 1 These are the principal circum- 

 stances 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 a 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 rendezvoused here by thousands, if they 

 happened to be suddenly roused from their roost trees on an 

 evening, 



" Their rising all at once was like the sound 



Of thunder heard remote." 



It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to 

 add that I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it 

 a practice, for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs 

 of a ring-dove, to place them under a pair of doves that were 

 sitting in his own pigeon-house, hoping thereby, if he could 

 bring about a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his 

 own doves to beat out into the woods, and to support them- 

 selves by mast. The plan was plausible, but something 

 always interrupted the success, for though the birds were 

 usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet 

 none ever arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these 

 foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity of 

 nature, so as scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping 

 with their bills by way of menace. In short, they always 



1 Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to 

 withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over. Gr. W. 



