CHAPTER XVIII. 



PIGEONS, DOVES, AND SAND-GROUSE. 



"Pigeon, a well-known bird of the dove family." "Dove, 

 a pigeon." Thus "The Twentieth Century Dictionary," a 

 distinction without a difference found in a search for real 

 differences. Skeat helps even less. "Dove," with him is 

 connected with "dive," which is a piece of etymological in- 

 formation interesting only because it shows the name to have 

 been first applied to other birds. " Pigeon" he tells us comes 

 from an imitative word formed of the cry of the young. Thus 

 the student of nature eagerly in search of an answer to his 

 own query, "What is the difference between a pigeon and a 

 dove?" is met at the outset with linguistic difficulties. As a 

 matter of fact the two words are often used interchangeably, 

 with this reservation that those birds of the genus Colnmba 

 having marked swellings at the base of the bill are usually 

 called pigeons, and those without them doves. The difference 

 is easily noticeable if an ordinary tame pigeon is compared 

 with one of the wild, wood varieties, e.g., the ring dove and 

 stock dove in England or Titrtitr Sinensis and TurtitrRttpicola, 

 as we know them in this province. 



The most common about Shanghai is Turtnr Sinensis, 

 the Chinese turtle-dove. This is the bird which is becoming 

 as tame in the western district of Shanghai as is its near 

 relative the ring dove, wood-pigeon, or wood-quest of the 

 London parks. Two years ago I had an opportunity of study- 

 ing these birds in four separate districts in England, in the 

 northern and southern counties, in north Wales, and in Lon- 

 don. In the three first its degreeof wildness might be measured 

 by the amount of persecution it received from shooting men, 

 but there was little difference between north and south. 

 Once seen, it was impossible for a man to approach nearer 

 than a couple of hundred yards or so. Hence the contrast in 

 St. James's Park was marked in the extreme 1 . There 

 doves came fearlessly to one's very feet, searched about by 

 the side of one's chair for crumbs or bits of biscuit, and showed 

 no more alarm than would a barndoor fowl. Such may be the 

 extent of trustfulness between man and wild nature when the 

 wild nature of man has been curbed by law and custom. I 

 had seen the same conditions on the island of Pootoo a 



