Pigeons and Dovhs. 17 



III. 



FOREIGN DOVES. 



By Miss RosiE Aldkrson. 



The keeping of foreign doves and pigeons has never been 

 a very popular branch of aviculture, though many more people 

 keep ihem than in former years; and yet they are birds that have 

 many advantages, being long-lived, hardy (with a few exceptions) 

 and very adaptable to confinement. In many cases they will 

 rear young whilst in captivity, and a nesting bird is, to my think- 

 ing, a conteyited bird ; it shows that the old life of liberty is to 

 some extent only a memory and not a regret. 



Though I have kept, and still have, many other kinds of 

 birds, yet I have gone in chiefly for keeping doves, and, at one 

 time and another, have had more than 40 varieties. 



The Fruit Pigeons are so seldom to be had, and so rarely 

 kept, that there seems little to say about them. They vary very 

 much in size, and are often most beautiful iu their colouring, 

 many of them being green, with perhaps a touch of purple or 

 yellow. They need boiled maize as their staple food, prepared 

 freshly every day, for it soon turns sour, and this is rather a 

 drawback to keeping them, as any bird-food that has to be 

 cooked is a certain amount of trouble. 



In giving a list of such doves and pigeons in each family 

 that 2,x^ geiierally kept, I have thought it well to add some very 

 brief notes on the colouring of the plumage for the purpose of 



