It is common in some parts of England, but is very local in its visitations and is only a summer visitor. A “Son of the Marshes,” says, “It is common enough in some parts of Surrey. I have seen from ten to thirty of them rise from the standing oats, or from the long grass in the hayfield, at one flight. One of my friends shot a couple as they were rising from the oats, and opened their crops. Not a single grain of oat did he find in them. They were full of a little vetch that grew abundantly at the roots of the oats, or, to express it in true rustic agricultural phrase, ‘at the stam o’ the whuts.’ I was with the man at the time; after that examination of the birds’ crops he declared he would never shoot another pigeon.” Another member of this family, the beautiful Ring Dove or Wood Pigeon (_Colúmba palumbus_), called Queest in Ireland, and Cushat in the North, because of its soft notes, is a bird that we could ill-spare from our woods and coppices. It is, however, an undeniable fact that the members of this voracious species have increased of late years in a manner which is alarming to the hard-working farmer. Many writers have taken up the cudgels in defence of these birds on account mainly of the amount of noxious weeds, wild mustard seed, and leaves they devour, but, as that great naturalist, the late Lord Lilford, wrote, in sending me a little box of the contents of the crops of three birds extracted by himself: “In a highly-farmed country these weeds hardly exist; and,” he added, “in my opinion his good deeds are in no way comparable to the damage done. I have frequently, when shooting Wood Pigeons in the winter months, seen their crops burst on coming down dead from a height, from distension with hearts, acorns, barley, and turnip-tops.” The contents of the three birds’ crops sent to me were 129 peas, 85 beans, and some broken vegetable matter. The amount of good or of harm done by this species varies, as in the case of other birds, according to the weather and the scarcity or plenty of their natural food about the woods and the lands skirting these. Considering the numbers that breed in our midst the farmers might well thin these, and send a better supply of birds to the market. * * * * *