OF SELBORNE. T13 
wonderful hitcrnal migration, which with us takes place towards 
the end of November, and ceafes early in the fpring. Laft winter 
we had in Selborne high wood about an hundred of thefe doves; 
but in former times the flocks were fo vaft, not only with us but 
all the diftrid round, that on mornings and evenings they traverfed 
the air, like rooks, in firings, reaching for a mile together. When 
they thus rendezvoufed here by thoufands, if they happened to be 
fuddenly roufed from their rooft-trees on an evening, 
" Their lifing all at once was like the found 
" Of thundei- heard remote." — — 
It will by no means be foreign to the prefent purpofe to add, 
that I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a pradiice, 
for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to 
place them under a pair of doves that Vy-erc fitting in his own 
pigeon-houfe ; 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 fupport themfelves by maft : the plan was plaufible, 
but fomething always interrupted the fuccefs ; for though the birds 
were ufually hatched, and fometimes grew to half their fize, yet 
none ever arrived at maturity. I myfelf have feen thefe foundlings 
in their neft difplaying a ftrange ferocity of nature, fo as fcarcely 
to bear to be looked at, and fnapping with their bills by way of 
menace. In fhort, they always died, perhaps for want of proper 
fuftenance : but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild 
demeanour they frighted their fofter-mothers, and fo were ftarved, 
Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of fmiile^ defcribes a 
dove haunting the cavern of a rock in fuch engaging numbers, 
that I cannot refrain from quoting the paffage : and John Dryden 
has 
