218 
The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare's Time. 
pair, hath mounted the annual wast they make to an incredible sum ; 
and, if the moiety of his proportions hold true, doves may be accounted 
the causers of death, and justly answer their etymology in Hebrew, 
Jonah , which is deduced from a root signifying to spoil or destroy.” 
('Worthies of England, vol. ii. p. 1585 
Though pigeon-breeding was doubtless practised as 
an amusement, we find no mention by name of any 
fancy varieties. In a poem by Barnfield, published 
about 1590, we meet with a suggestion of a feathered-toed 
pigeon :— 
“ And when th* art wearie of thy keeping sheepe, 
Upon a lovely downe, to please thy minde, 
lie give thee fine ruffe-footed doves to keepe, 
And pretty pigeons of another kind.” 
Later on, we are informed that— 
“ House-doves are white, and oozels blacke-birds bee.” 
{The Ajfectinate Shepheard.) 
Thomas Muffett tells us that “ wild doves be especially 
four; rock-doves, stock-doves,ring-doves, and turtle doves ” 
{Healths Improvement, p. 100). 
The wood-pigeon was called the wood-quist, or wood- 
queest. Lyly writes:— 
“ Me thought I saw a stock-dove, or wood-quist, I know not how 
to tearme it, that brought short strawes to build his nest on a tall 
cedar.” (Sappho and Phaon , iv. 3.) 
Sir Thomas Herbert, in his lively narrative of the 
travels on which he set out in 1626, gives 
some interesting particulars of the long extinct 
Dodo, a species of bird closely allied to the pigeon. He 
is describing the island of Mauritius, and writes :— 
“ This noble isle, as it is prodigal in her water and wood, so she 
corresponds in what else a fruitful parent labours in: not onely boast¬ 
ing in that variety, but in feathered creatures also; yea, in the 
rareness of that variety: I will name but some, and first the dodo ; a 
