STOCK-DOVE. 
249 
Some of our old writers called this the wood- pigeon or 
wild pigeon, and others confounded it with the rock- 
dove, so that there is some ambiguity about its former 
history. 
It is plain, from numerous remarks by Gilbert White, 
that it did not nest at Selborne in his time. 
In his Journal of November 24th, 1770, he writes : — 
" Stock-doves . . . leave us all to a bird in the 
spring," and he notes several years in succession that 
" wood-pigeons are the last bird of passage to appear." 
In his Letter xxxix. to Pennant (November 9th, 1773), 
he calls it the common wild pigeon, and says that it " is a 
bird of passage in the south of England, seldom appearing 
till towards the end of November ; is usually the latest 
winter bird of passage. Before our beechen woods were 
so much destroyed, we had myriads of them, reaching in 
strings for a mile together as they went out in a morning 
to feed. They leave us early in spring ; where do they 
breed ? " 
In his Letter xliv. to Pennant he gives many excellent 
reasons for believing that the domestic pigeon is derived, 
not from this species, but from the rock-dove. 
The stock-dove, he says, " as long as it stays with us, 
from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild 
life with the ring-dove . . . ; frequents coppices and 
groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to 
roost in the tallest beeches." 
He ventures to doubt Pennant's report of the bird's 
nesting in Sussex, "because people with us perpetually 
confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove." 
He adds that he had consulted a sportsman, then in his 
seventy-eighth year, " who tells me that fifty or sixty years 
back .... the number of wood pigeons was astonishing 
