130 FANCY PIGEONS. 



them, and picked up one, which he shook from side to side, 

 and then tossed into the air. It was a yellow pied, from one 

 of the other flights. 



It is probable that pigeon flying carried on in this way has 

 travelled westward from Asia. The Italian books make men- 

 tion of a similar practice being common in Moscow. It is 

 well-known that the Taj Mahal, at Agra, and other fine build- 

 ings that are the glory of the East, were designed by Italian 

 architects, and nothing is more likely than that some of 

 the Italians, who were in India from two to three hundred 

 years ago, may have been pigeon fanciers, and taken the 

 sport home with them. There is even some resemblance in 

 the respective breeds used for the sport in Italy and India. 

 The Modenese Statutes of 1327 and 1547 prohibit the snaring 

 of pigeons by nets or strings, but they do not prove con- 

 clusively that this sport was in use then. Some of the 

 Venetians may have originated the sport in the fifteenth 

 century. The Venetians had intimate business relations with 

 India 400 years ago, and their coins are still plentiful there. 

 I have bought old Venetian ducats in India, where they are 

 valued for their purity, and hoarded up with the gold 

 Mohurs of Akbar. The sport of pigeon-flying may have 

 reached Italy from Turkey or the Levant, for I have no doubt 

 it is carried on in Persia, Turkish Arabia, and Asia Minor, 

 in very much the same manner as in Hindostan. 



