The Natural History of Selborne

Oenas, sive vinago.  The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon appears.  Where they breed is uncertain.  They leave us in spring, & do not return ’til about this time.  Before the beechen woods were so much destroyed we had every winter prodigious flocks, reaching for a mile together as they went out from their roost of a morning.  Hartley-wood used to abound with them.  They were considerably less than the ring-dove, or queest, which breeds with us, and stays the whole year round.