that county. But why did not your
correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks,
cliffs, or trees? If he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt
the fact, because people with us perpetually confound the stock-dove with
the ring-dove.

For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves
are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. In the
first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common
house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally
enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable black spots on the
remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic of
the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being
reclaimed, but would often break out among its descendants. But what is
worth a hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's
house-doves in Caernarvonshire; which, though tempted by plenty of food
and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for
any time; but as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to the
fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the
inaccessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory.

"Naturam expellas furca . . . tamen usque recurret."

I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, who tells
me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen woods were much more
extensive than at present, the number of wood-pigeons was astonishing;
that he has often killed near twenty in a day, and that with a long
wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the wing as they
came wheeling over his head: he moreover adds, which I was not aware of,
that often there were among them little parties of small blue doves,
which he calls rockiers. The food of these numberless emigrants was
beech-mast and some acorns, and particularly barley, which they collected
in the stubbles. But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips,
that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard
weather; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the crop.
From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which occasions
them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought them before a
delicate dish. They were shot not only as they were feeding in the
fields, and especially in snowy weather, but also at the close of the
eve