THE ROCK-DOVE. 
13 
The mention of various places in connexion with this bird 
induces me to remark, though at the expense of the repetition of 
a few names, that nearly as the ring-dove and the rock-dove, 
distributed in suitable localities over the British Islands, are 
allied, their haunts are very different ; the former being associated 
with the tender and the beautiful, the latter with the stern and 
the sublime in nature. The ring-dove is most at home in the 
lordly domain, rich in noble and majestic trees, the accumulated 
growth of centuries. The stately beech, beautiful even in winter, 
when with greyish-silver stem it towers upwards from its favourite 
sloping banks, — richly carpeted in the russet hue of its fallen 
leaves, — -and expands into a graceful head of reddish branches, 
affords the species nightly shelter. The same tree, too, may 
have cradled the infant ring-dove ; and when the bird became 
mature, fed it with its “ mast.'’"’ The rock-dove, on the other 
hand, has its abode in the gloomy caverns both of land and sea. 
How various are the scenes — nay, countries and climates — brought 
vividly, with all their accompaniments, before the mind, by the 
sight of this handsome species ! A brief indication of the nature 
of a very few may here be given ; and in the first place, of two 
similar in kind, but yet how different/'’ The most northern 
great water-fall at which tliis bird has come under my notice is 
that of Boyers, in Inverness-shire, where its habitation, 
“ Dim-seen through rising mists and ceaseless showers. 
The hoary cavern^ wide-surrounding, lowers.” 
Over this fall ^Hhe evergreen pine’^ presides in majesty, and the 
surrounding scenery partakes of the fine bold character of the 
land of the mountain and the flood. Brom the banks above, 
we may, however, in a serene day, gaze across the lengthened 
expanse of Loch Ness as it sleeps in azure, and over the steep 
mountain-sides that rise from its margin richly wooded with the 
graceful weeping birch (the predominant species), the hazel, and 
other indigenous trees, until the eye rests on the somewhat dis- 
tant and lofty pyramidal summit of Maelfourvonie. The most 
southern locality of a similar kind, in which rock- doves attracted 
