100 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus rendez- 
voused 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 neighborhood who made it a 
practice, 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 suste- 
nance: but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild 
demeanor they frighted their foster-mothers, and so were 
starved. 
Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, describes a 
dove haunting the cavern of a rock, in such engaging numbers, 
that I cannot refrain from quoting the passage; which John 
Dryden has rendered so happily in our language. 
*"As when a dove her rocky hold forsakes, 
Rous’d, in a fright her sounding wings she shakes ; 
The cavern rings with clattering : — out she flies, 
And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies ; 
At first she flutters : — but at length she springs 
To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings.” 
VIRGIL, 42. V. 213-217, 
