OF SELBORNE 113 



safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and precipices of 

 that stupendous promontory. 



" Naturam expellas furcS . . . tamen usque rccurret." 



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 aston- 

 ishing ; 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 

 numberless 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.* 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 



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

 to withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmps frosts were over, 



