114 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, 

 in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they 

 thus rendezvous 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 themselves 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 died, 

 perhaps for want of proper sustenance : but the owner 

 thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour they 

 frighted their foster-mothers, and so were starved. 



Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, 

 describes a dove haunting the cavern of a rock in such 

 engaging numbers, that I cannot refrain from quoting the 

 passage : and John Dryden has rendered it so happily 

 in our language, that without farther excuse I shall add 

 his translation also. 



" Oualis spelunca subito commota Columba, 

 Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi, 

 Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis 

 Dat tecto ingentcm — mox aere lapsa quieto, 

 Padit iter Uquidum, celeres neque commovet alas." 



