172 National Frofii. 



among the chief feathered favourites of 

 mankind ; and in the eastern countries, the 

 original sources of religious superstition, the 

 dove has ever been a great object of vene- 

 ration, as an emblem of something divine. 



But to proceed to a far more material 

 point — the national profit of encoura- 

 ging the breed of pigeons to any great ex- 

 tent, has long been the subject of much 

 dispute, and the celebrated M. Duhamel, 

 the apologist of these beautiful favourites, 

 I apprehend, has not been a successful ad- 

 vocate. He avers that pigeons do not feed 

 upon green corn — that their bills have not 

 sufficient power to dig for seeds in the 

 earth, and that they only pick up scattered 

 grains, which would else be wasted, or be- 

 come the prey of other birds. From the 

 season of the corn appearing, he says, pi- 

 geons subsist upon the seeds of weeds, the 

 multiplication of which they must, in conse- 

 quence, greatly prevent. Another writer 

 has of late introduced a story of the far- 

 mers in a certain district in England, who, 

 finding their corn and pulse crops greatly 



