132 
NATURAL HISTORY 
dove; but suppose those that have advanced that opinion 
may have been misled by another appellation, often given 
to the (EnaSj which is that of stock-dove. 
Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in 
manners from itself in summer, no species seems more un- 
likely to be domesticated and to make a house-dove. We 
very rarely see the latter settle on trees at all, nor does it 
ever haunt the woods ; but the former, as long as it stays 
with us, from l^ovember perhaps to February, lives the 
same wild life with the ring-dove {Palumhus torquatus) ; ^ 
frequents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by 
mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it 
be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt 
would be settled with me at once, provided they construct 
their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect 
they do.^ 
You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from 
Sussex, and are informed that they sometimes breed in that 
county. But why did not your correspondent determine 
the place of its nidification, whether on rocks, cliffs, or 
trees ? If he was not an adroit ornithologist, I should 
doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually confound 
the stock-dove with the ring-dove.^ 
For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing 
that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock- 
^ Cohimha palumhus, Lixn. 
^ The stock-doA^e, Coluwba cenas. Linn., so called from its habit 
of building in stocks or pollards, nests also in deserted rabbit burrows, 
and even under thick furze bushes, where openings near the ground 
have been made by rabbits. Mr. Salmon, in his notice of Norfolk 
birds ("Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist.," vol. ix. p. 520), says he has 
known the stock-dove to make its nest high up in a fir tree, like the 
ring-dove ; but this was undoubtedly an exceptional case. It has fallen 
to the lot of the writer on different occasions to find stock-doves nesting 
in a church spire (cf. "The Ibis," 1867, p. 379, and "Zoologist," 
1867, p. 758) and even in limestone rocks facing the sea (cf. "The 
Field," 14th April, 1866). In both instances the young were taken 
and reared, and the identity of the species thus placed beyond 
doubt. — Ed. 
^ Pennant confounded the stock-dove with the rock-dove, Columba 
livia, Temjm. and made one species of them. — Ed. 
