COLUMBARIUM 



may possibly have found its way to France, 

 seems never to have reached Britain. This 

 was an arrangement by which the birds could 

 be fed from the exterior of the house through 

 an elaborate system of pipes and troughs. 

 The troughs were placed all round the tiers 

 of nest-holes, while the pipes communicating 

 with them had their orifice outside the walls. 

 The most perfect nicety of adjustment must 

 have been required, since the pipes were 

 called on to convey, not smoothly flowing 

 water, but a great variety of grain, such as 

 peas, beans, millet, refuse wheat, and vetches. 

 It may perhaps be fairly doubted whether 

 so complicated an arrangement was in very 

 general use. 



Varro seems to recommend that water, not 

 only for drinking but for washing purposes, 

 should flow into the house, and one authority 

 suggests the provision of a fairly large bath- 

 ing-basin in the centre of the floor, a hint we 

 shall in due course find followed in an ancient 

 English dovecote. Columella, on the contrary, 

 favoured the use of small drinking-vessels 

 which would admit the pigeon's head and neck 



7 



