reptile to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour, which he cannot lay aside; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his own shell, must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition for enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the beginning of June) when his exertions are remarkable. He then walks on tiptoe, and is stirring by five in the morning; and, traversing the garden, examines every wicket and interstice in the fences, through which he will escape if possible; and often has eluded the care of the gardener, and wandered to some distant field. The motives that impel him to undertake these rambles seem to be of the amorous kind. His fancy then becomes intent on sexual attachments, which transport him beyond his usual gravity, and induce him to forget for a time his ordinary solemn deportment.

LETTER XCIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

A PAIR of honey-buzzards, buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, Raii, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs, and lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near the middle of Selborne Hanger, in the summer of 1780. In the middle of the month of June, a bold boy climbed this tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had been set on for some time, and contained the embryo of a young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round, as those of the common buzzard; was dotted at each end with small red spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad bloody zone.

The hen bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Ray's description of that species; had a black cere, short thick legs, and a long tail. When on the wing, this species may be

by inclining them to the horizon;" in which the author has shown, by calculation, that a much greater number of the rays of the sun will fall on such walls than on those which are perpendicular

easily distinguished from the common buzzard by its hawklike appearance, small head, wings not so blunt, and longer tail. This specimen contained in its craw some limbs of frogs, and many grey snails without shells.* The irides of the eyes of this bird were of a beautiful bright yellow colour.

About the 10th of July, in the same summer, a pair of sparrow-hawks bred in an old crow's nest on a low beech in the same hanger; and as their brood, which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and ravenous, that they were a terror to all the dames in the village that had chickens or ducklings under their care. A boy climbed the tree, and found the young so fledged that they all escaped from him, but discovered that a good house had been kept. The larder was well stored with provisions; for he brought down ȧ young blackbird, jay, and house-martin, all clean picked, and some half devoured. The old birds had been observed to make sad havoc for some days among the new-flown swallows and martins, which, being but lately out of their nests, had not acquired those powers and command of wing that enable them, when more mature, to set such enemies at defiance.

LETTER XCIV.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Nov. 30, 1780.

DEAR SIR, Every incident that occasions a renewal of cur correspondence will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me. As to the wild wood-pigeon,† the oenas or vinago, of Ray, I

*They constantly feed their young with the larvae of wasps and bees, and probably themselves when they are able to procure them. This has probably led to the idea of their eating honey. Besides frogs and snails, they will occasionally prey on birds, rabbits, &c.-ED.

Both White and some other naturalists have written confused accounts of these pigeons. The cushat or ring-dove (columba palumbus) inhabits woods and makes its nest on the branches of trees.

The stock-pigeon (C. oenas) has a grey slaty colour, and breeds freely in holes in the old pollards in Richmond Park.

The rock-pigeon (C. livia) of a slaty grey, with two black bars on the wings,

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 stockdove.

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 Carnarvonshire; 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,

breeds amongst rocks on the sea-coast. I have seen them in Taswell Bay near Swansea.-ED.