130 Birp NOTEs. 
destroy an untold amount of farm crop. An interesting dis- 
cussion took place at a meeting of Dumfries Agricultural Society 
the other day, at which it was advocated at the same time as 
rooks were being destroyed that wood pigeons should also be 
shot down or killed in some way. It was advocated that some 
one should try to introduce pigeon diphtheria for the purpose of 
inoculating wood pigeons here, and so lead to the diminution of 
these birds. Those who talked about the destruction of pigeons 
seemed to overlook a great deal of the biology of the bird. 
They forgot that most of the pigeons with us during the winter 
season were nearly all imports. Almost all of them came over 
the North Sea in great numbers from North Germany, Sweden, 
Norway, and Western Russia. So that even if they killed the 
pigeons in this district of ours they would not destroy the stock to 
any appreciable extent. He maintained that the proper time and 
method of killing pigeons or lessening their numbers was during 
the nesting season. The diphtheria of pigeons, he was sorry to 
say, was to be seen in our own neighbourhood, although in small 
numbers as yet. Diphtheria was an exceedingly contagious 
disease, and there was no saying where it would go. Only the 
other day he came upon a couple of dead pigeons, but he found 
that they had had diphtheria, and he threw them down. They 
would probably have been of some interest for study if he had 
taken them home, but diphtheria was a very dangerous trouble 
indeed, and there was no doubt that it was communicable to 
human beings from the lower animals. Many people held 
different views as to the origin of the diphtheria among the wild 
pigeons. To him it seemed plain that the wild pigeon 
diphtheria came from the domestic pigeon. For a great many 
years past the sport of pigeon homing had developed in an 
extremely rapid manner. Nearly every Saturday during summer 
large special trains were run from various of the manufacturing 
centres of England with thousands upon thousands of the ordi- 
nary domestic homing pigeons. Many of these pigeons were 
taken a greater distance than they could find their way home, 
and they never returned. They strayed, and with no water and 
not much food, diphtheria set in among them. These stray 
pigeons went to the haunts of the wood pigeon, and that 
accounted for the spread of diphtheria to the wild ones. For a 
long period of years they had enjoyed the operation of that 
