RING-DO VE. 
247 
Numbers of migrants arrive in the autumn and pass 
the winter with us ; in hard weather these great flocks clear 
off the green leaves of the root crop as closely as if they 
had been fed off by sheep ; they also visit the beech and 
oak woods, and search among the dead leaves for the fallen 
beech-mast and acorns. 
Gilbert White, in his Letter xliv. to Pennant, dated 
from Selborne, November 30th, 1780, also mentions the 
vast quantities of wood-pigeons that abounded, and the 
damage done to the root crops by them. He writes : " But 
of late years, since the vast increase of turnips, that 
vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in 
hard weather. . . . From this food their flesh has con- 
tracted 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 a hundred of these doves ; but in former years the 
flocks were so vast, not only with us, but all the district 
round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the 
air like rooks, in 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.' " 
He did not find them interesting pets, for he writes of their 
