WOOD-PIGEONS, 
115 
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-pigeon, for 
many reasons. In the first place the wild stock-dove is mani- 
festly 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 characteristic 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 a 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 themselv^es to the fastnesses of 
Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the inacces- 
sible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory. 
" Naturam expellas furca . . . 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 beechen 
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 numberless emigrants 
was beech-mast and some acorns ; and particularly barley, which 
* A Tevy good argument, as is sufficiently exemplified by the fact that the two conspicuous 
black bars on the wing of the wild rock-pigeon may be observed in many individuals of all its 
numerous domestic varieties. The simple circumstance of the house-pigeon never perching upon 
trees is of itself demonstrative of its distinctness from the C. oenas. — Ed. 
I 2 
