WOOD PIGEON. 161 
‘melancholy music’ as you ‘walk in the fields to meditate,’ or 
lie on some grassy bank in the settled summer time, when 
all nature has thrown off the mantle that cold had wrapped 
around her, and again comes forth in her renewed beauty, 
courting scrutiny in the full blaze of the sun, ‘shining in 
his strength.’. ‘You may look, and look, and look again,’ 
and in every insect that hovers about you, every overhanging 
flower, every passing cloud, every murmuring breeze, and the 
note of every bird, see what you cannot see, and hear what 
you cannot hear, the hand and the voice of Gop. 
Karly in the spring, at sunrise, the Ring Dove cooes to 
his mate, perched on the same or some neighbouring bough, 
then mounts in the air, and floats or sails to the top of 
the nearest tree, or, cooing all the while, will continue rising 
and falling several times, with a peculiar sort of -flight, and 
when at its greatest elevation flapping the wings together 
backwards with a distinct sound, audible at some distance 
on a still day. 
The nest, wide and shallow, placed usually at a height of 
from sixteen to twenty feet from the ground, is little more 
than a rude platform of a few crossed sticks and twigs, the 
largest as the foundation, so thinly laid together that the 
egos or young may sometimes be discovered from below. It 
is often built in woods and plantations, but not unfrequently 
also in single trees, even those that are close to houses, 
roads and lanes, the oak and the beech, the fir or any other 
suitable one, or even in ivy against a wall, rock, or tree, or 
in a thick bush or shrub in a garden, or an isolated thorn, 
even in the thick part, so that in flymg out in a hurry, if 
alarmed, many of the loosely-attached feathers are pulled out. 
One pair built in a spruce fir not ten yards from a garden 
gate, where they were constantly hable to disturbance by the 
ringing of the bell, and, the passing in and out of the 
members of the family. Another pair dwelt two years in 
succession close to a window by a frequented walk, and this, 
though a cat destroyed the young. 
The eggs, which are delicious eating, are two in number, 
pure white, and of a rounded oval form; two and sometimes 
_three broods are produced in the season, but the third may 
possibly be only the consequence of a previous one having 
been destroyed or prevented: the eggs are hatched in sixteen 
or seventeen days. The young are fed from the bills of the 
parent birds with the food previously swallowed, reduced to 
vou, IV. M 
