88 
NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBORNE. 
For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house- 
doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. 
In the first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the 
common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which 
generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable black spots 
on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so character- 
istic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its 
being reclaimed ; but would often break out among its descendants. 
But what is worth an hundred arguments is, the instance you give in 
Sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves in Caernarvonshire ; which, though 
tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed 
on to inhabit their cote for any time ; but, as soon as they begin to 
breed, betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit 
their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns, and precipices of 
that stupendous promontory.* 
*'Naturam expellas furci, . . . tamen usque recurret. " 
I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, who 
tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beeclien woods were 
much more extensive than at present, the number of wood-pigeons was 
astonishing ; that he has often killed near twenty in a day : and that 
with a long wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the 
wing as they came wheeling over his head : he moreover adds, which I 
was not aware of, that often there were among them little parties of 
small blue doves, which he calls rockiers. The food of these number- 
less emigrants was beech-mast and some acorns ; and particularly 
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 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.f 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 an hundred of these doves ; but in former 
times 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 
* It is the wliite-rumped pigeon, or rock dove, Columha livia, which is the 
original stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abodes of this species is caves and 
rocky precipices on the sea-coast. Although White remarks that the domestic 
pigeon never settles on trees, such is sometimes the case ; Mr. Eyton has observed 
this, and we have frequently seen it ; at the same time it is by no means the 
general habit. 
t "Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw 
as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over." 
