SELBORNE, _Nov. 30th_, 1780.
Dear Sir,--Every incident that occasions a renewal of our correspondence
will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me.
As to the wild wood-pigeon, the _OEnas_, or _Vinago_, of Ray, I am much
of your mind, and see no reason for making it the origin of the common
house-dove: but suppose those that have advanced that opinion may have
been misled by another appellation, often given to the _OEnas_, which is
that of stock-dove.
Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in manners from itself
in summer, no species seems more unlikely to be domesticated, and to make
a house-dove. We very rarely see the latter settle on trees at all, nor
does it ever haunt the woods; but the former, as long as it stays with
us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the
ring-dove, _Palumbus torquatus_; frequents coppices and groves, supports
itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches.
Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be
settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees,
like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.
You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex, and are
informed that they sometimes breed in 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
evening, 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 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."