COLUMBARIUM 



Young pigeons are, as will be known to many, 

 fed by their parents upon half-digested food. 



The English farmer's wife who wishes to 

 fatten quickly a clutch of young ducklings is 

 careful to give them no opportunity of swim- 

 ming, but confines them in a narrow pen and 

 doles out water only with their food. The 

 Roman pigeon-keeper had more drastic me- 

 thods with hissquabs; he broke their legs, todo 

 away with all excess of exercise. Columella, al- 

 most as though he had an eye upon the modern 

 British reader and inspectors of the S.P.C.A., 

 hastens to add that the pain caused by the op- 

 eration disappeared in two, or at the most three 

 days. It may have been so; but one cannot 

 help recalling the remark of Sydney Smith, 

 who, when a man recounted how he had been 

 bitten without any provocation by a dog, re- 

 plied, while sympathising, that he ''wouldhave 

 liked to have the dog's account of the affair." 



But Roman pigeons were not kept ex- 

 clusively for satisfaction of the grosser and 

 material appetites. There are signs of a com- 

 mencement of a "fancy," for people were in the 

 habit of taking favourite birds with them to the 



II 



