COLUMBA AWD PALTTMBES. II5 



And in the same fifth Aeneid, the bird which served as a target 

 in the archery coEtest — a domestic bird, we may suppose — was 

 a columba, not a palumhes. 



Now it is a fact almost universally recognised by modem 

 ornithologists that our domestic pigeon is in all its varieties 

 descended from the wild Eoek-dove; and thus when we find 

 that the Romans used columba to denote their domestic bird, 

 and also a wild bird which made its nest in rocks, the eoncln- 

 sion is almost certain that by that word we are to understand 

 our Blue-rods; pigeon {Cdiumba lima); and if this is so, 

 by jpalumbes must be meant one of the other two Italian 

 pigeons, the Wood-pigeon [GalunAa pahmibus, Linn.) or the 

 Stock-dove {fjaluwha aenas, Linn.). Both species, as I have 

 said, are now birds of passage in Italy, while the Blue-rock is 

 resident ; and Pliny tells us of the palttmbes that it arrived every 

 year in great numbers from the sea— he does not say at what 

 season. Perhaps the Stock-dove ^ is the more likely of the two 

 to have been the bird generally meant by palumhes ; but it is 

 quite possible that, like the unskilled of the present day, the 

 • Romans confounded the two species, and wrote of them as one. 



But there is still a difficulty. The palumhes in the time of 

 Virgil and Pliny seems to have bred in Italy; Pliny knew 

 all about their breeding (x. 147 and 153), and Virgil makes 

 Damoetas mark the place where their nesting is going on. But 

 it is mow very rarely, if we may trust Italian naturalists, that 

 either Bing-dove or Stock-dove passes a summer in Italy. Birds 



^ Philemon Holland so IxaDslates paltmies iu his viersion oF FliBy, 

 I 2 



