PIGEONS. 



333 



when their brood are about three weeks old, leaving them to the care 

 of their mates. Instead of egg- boxes, shelves partitioned off, and. 

 having sliding fronts for the convenience of cleaning, are ofttimes 

 used ; and if the young fancier intends to keep pouters, the shelves 

 should be fourteen inches in breadth, and at least twenty inches 

 apart, that the birds may not acquire an ungainly habit of stooping, 

 which depreciates their value considerably. The fountain, a large- 

 bellied glass bottle with a tolerably long neck, for water, is an im- 

 portant item in the pigeon-house; it should be laid down on a small 

 three-legged stool, and so placed that its mouth may descend into an 

 earthenware pan, by which arrangement the water will trickle slowly 

 into the pan, and cease the instant it reaches the level of the mouth 

 of the bottle, and a continued supply of fresh water is thereby kept 

 up ; in lieu of a stool, two or three bricks will give the bottle the 

 necessary elevation, and answer equally as well. 



It is indispensable to the proper thriving of the birds that the loft 

 and shelves be kept clean, and gravel strown on the floor; indeed, 

 the gravel must on DO account be omitted, as pigeons are exceedingly 

 fond of picking it, and cannot without the aid of gritty matter digest 

 their food thoroughly. 



The aerie before men- 

 tioned, which is fastened 

 on the shelf outside the 

 loft, is a trap made of 

 laths ; it has two sides 

 and a front only, the 

 wall of the loft forming 

 the back ; the front and 

 sides act upon hinges so 

 that they may be thrown 

 open and laid flat on the 

 platform, as in the an- 

 nexed figure ABC, and on the upper parts of these flaps strings 

 are fastened, which are united to a single string in the middle of the 

 trap, the string is carried over the swivel E, at the top of the 

 machine, and thence to a hiding-place, from whence the owner can 

 see all that passes, and when a bird alights within the aerie he jerks 

 the string, the flaps are elevated, and the bird is immediately a 

 prisoner. The aerie, when 

 shut, presents the appear- 

 ance shown in the illustra- 

 tion. This kind of trap is 

 used not only by fanciers, 

 but by amateurs also, and 

 is of great importance, both 

 as a means of self-defence 

 to secure strays and to shut 

 in their own birds ; among 

 amateur fanciers the first - 

 mentioned purpose is to 



