ning, by men who lay in ambush among the woods and groves to kill them
as they came in to roost. These are the principal circumstances relating
to this wonderful internal migration, which with us takes place towards
the end of November, and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had
in Selborne high wood about a hundred of these doves; but in former times
the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district round,
that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, in
strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus rendezvoused 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 neighbourhood 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
sustenance: but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour
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: and John Dryden has rendered it so
happily in our language, that without further excuse I shall add his
translation also.

"Qualis spelunca subito commota Columba,
Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis,
Dat tecto ingentem--mox aere lapsa quieto,
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas."

"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 le