116 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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.* These are the principal circum- 
stances 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 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, reach- 
ing 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." 
It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to add, 
that I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a prac- 
tice, for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring- 
dove, to place them under a pair of doves that were sitting in 
his own pigeon-house ; hoping thereby, if he could bring about 
a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his own doves to beat 
out into the woods and to support themselves by mast ; the plan 
was plausible, but something always interrupted the success ; for 
though the birds were usually hatched, and sometimes grew to 
half their size, yet none ever arrived at maturity. I myself have 
seen these foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity 
of nature, so as scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping 
with their bills by way of menace. In short, they always died, 
perhaps for want of proper sustenance : but the owner thought 
that by their fierce and wild demeanour they frighted their foster- 
mothers, and so were starved.f 
* Some old sportsmen say that the main pan of these flocks used to withdraw a« soon as the 
heavy Christmas frosts were over. 
t As in places where the cushat-pigeon (or " ring-dove") is not disturbed, it has a decided 
tendency to become rather tame during the breedinjr season, there can be little doubt that, by 
rational management, it might be rendered almost domestic, though it would be manifestly quite 
useless to expect it to breed in a dove-cot. They often become extremely tame, if reared from 
