THE ROCK-DOVE. 13 



The ineution of various places in connexion with this bird 

 induces rue to remark, though at the expense of the repetition of 

 a few names, that nearly as the ring-dove and the rock-dove, 

 distributed in suitable localities over the British Islands, are 

 allied, their haunts are very different ; the former being associated 

 with the tender and the beautiful, the latter with the stern and 

 the sublime in nature. The ring-dove is most at home in the 

 lordly domain, rich in noble and majestic trees, the accumulated 

 growth of centuries. The stately beech, beautiful even in winter, 

 when with greyish-silver stem it towers upwards from its favourite 

 sloping banks, — richly carpeted in the russet hue of its fallen 

 leaves, — and expands into a graceful head of reddish branches, 

 affords the species nightly shelter. The same tree, too, may 

 have cradled the infant ring-dove; and when the bird became 

 mature, fed it with its " mast." The rock-dove, on the other 

 hand, has its abode in the gloomy caverns both of land and sea. 

 How various are the scenes — nay, countries and climates — brought 

 vividly, with all their accompaniments, before the mind, by the 

 sight of this handsome species ! A brief indication of the nature 

 of a very few may here be given ; and in the first place, of two 

 similar in kind, but " yet how different," The most northern 

 great water-fall at which this bird has come under my notice is 

 that of Foyers, in Inverness-shire, where its habitation, 



" Dim-seen through rising mists and ceaseless showers, 

 The hoar// cavern, wide-surrounding, lowers." 



Over this fall "the evergreen pine" presides in majesty, and the 

 surrounding scenery partakes of the fine bold character of the 

 " land of the mountain and the flood." From the banks above, 

 we may, however, in a serene day, gaze across the lengthened 

 expanse of Loch Ness as it sleeps in azure, and over the steep 

 mountain-sides that rise from its margin richly wooded with the 

 graceful weeping birch (the predominant species), the hazel, and 

 other indigenous trees, until the eye rests on the somewhat dis- 

 tant and lofty pyramidal summit of Maelfourvonie. The most 

 southern locality of a similar kind, in which rock-doves attracted 



