550 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch. XLIV. 



leave a stab o't. There's mair nor a hunder thousand out the day.' 

 This rather alarmed me ; so I got several guns loaded, and gave all the 

 men orders to shoot at them as soon as they alighted. The fun that followed 

 was very amusing. Every workman rejoices in a job of this sort as a relax- 

 ation from labour. The shepherd left his flock, the thrasher his flail hang- 

 ing over the barn-door, the ploughman left his plough standing in the 

 furrow, ' to get a plufF at the cusha doos ;' and there were as many sharp- 

 shooters thundering away as if the French were in the field. But the 

 marksmen were bad, and the birds shy, and they generally escaped with life, 

 though, by report, at the expense of a number of their feathers. At length 

 a lad brought in two one day, and on opening their crops, which were 

 crammed one would have thought to bursting, there was not a particle of 

 anything else in them except the seeds of the runch, or wild mustard. I 

 examined the contents of both with a microscope, and called in the servants 

 to witness it. They were all obliged to acknowledge the fact; and forth- 

 with a bill of emancipation was passed in favour of the cusha doos, which 

 from that time have been free to come and g-o at their pleasure." 



Notwithstanding this, however, pigeons — both tame and wild — are 

 greedy devourers of corn, as well as very injurious to turnip crops by 

 picking holes in the bulbs with their bills ; and, if any reliance can be 

 placed on the following statement, farmers are not wrong in driving them 

 from their fields: — " They often fly to a great distance for their food, and 

 when they can find corn to eat, seldom prey upon anything else. They 

 begin to eat corn about the middle of July, and rarely want the same food 

 at the stacks, in the straw-yards, or in the fields, until the end of barley- 

 sowing, which is about old May-day, and which includes a period of 2S0 

 days, or better than three quarters of the year; the rest of the time they 

 live upon the seeds of weeds and buntings." 



" It is somewhere stated, that in England and in Wales there are 20,000 

 dove-houses, averaging about 100 pair of old pigeons ; but taking this esti- 

 mate at only 1,125,000 pair of tame pigeons, ihese, to speak moderately, 

 will consume — with what they carry home to their young — one pint of corn 

 per pair daily ; which for 140 days, being half the period they are sup- 

 posed to subsist upon corn, amounts to 157,500,000 pints, or 2,460,937^ 

 Winchester bushels ! besides the irreparable injury they commit in seed- 

 time by picking up every grain of seed wherever they alight, and the 

 quantity beaten out by their wings and trod under before harvest*" : a loss 

 which, it is presumed, can never be repaid either by their own intrinsic value, 

 or that of their dung. 



ANIMALS. 



Of all the four-footed animals included in tlie rank of vermin, rats and 

 mice are the most pernicious ; for they build their nests under the floors 

 and in the roofs of barns, nor even are the stacks exempt ; and are so pro- 

 lific that, if not destroyed, they occasion incalculable mischief. It therefore 

 behoves every farmer to use all possible means to check the evil, and one 

 might suppose that every exertion was invariably made for that purpose ; 

 yet we constantly find homesteads overrun with these pests without any 

 other pains being taken than an occasional rat-hunt by farm servants, 

 aided by a terrier ; which, though not to be neglected, is a very inefi'ectual 

 remedy. 



The best is, unquestionably, the construction of the barn-floor and roof 



* Vancouver's Survey of Devonshire, p. 357. Mr. Vancouver doubles the amount, 

 hut it is evidently through au error in calculation. 



