XCIV.] OF SELBORNE. 255 
emigrants was beecli-niast and some acorns ; and particnlarly 
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 ouly 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 
wood-pigeon's eg<;. 
migration, which with us takes place towards the end of Novem- 
ber, and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in Selborne 
high-wood about a hundred of these doves ; but in former times 
the fiocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district 
round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, 
like rooks, m strings, reaching for a mile together. When they 
thus rendezvoused 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 prac- 
tice, for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring- 
dove, to place tiiem under a pair of doves that were sitting in his 
