MISTAKE IN BEANS FUMIGATION. 151 



pigeons, as a warming and stimulant diet ; but ac- 

 cording to my experience they greatly prefer rape 

 and canary to hemp-seed. It has been remarked, 

 that beans, sodden in salt-water, scour pigeons 

 equally with new beans, and, in a voyage, suffering 

 them to drink sea-water will soon kill them ; although 

 so generally benefited by salt, an excess of it is fatal, 

 as it is also to vegetation, promoted as that is by a 

 moderate quantity. 



In most publications on the subject of pigeons, a 

 dangerous mistake has been made in a term applied 

 to beans. Small tick beans are recommended, in- 

 stead of small horse-beans. Now, the tick or Md- 

 well (in the western phrase), are the larger of the 

 two common field varieties, and beside being inferior 

 in quality, are too large for pigeons, which have 

 been sometimes choked even with the common-sized 

 horse-beans ; on which account, the smallest possi- 

 ble should be procured, whence such are termed 

 in the market accounts, " pigeon-beans." Pease, 

 wheat, and buck-wheat or brank, are eaten by 

 pigeons ; but should be given only in alternation, 

 not as a constant diet. The same of seeds. They 

 yet prefer wheat. The strong scent of cummin and 

 flavour of coriander seeds are said to have an allur- 

 ing effect upon the olfactory nerves and palate of 

 these birds ; as also the scent of asqfcetida, and 

 other powerfully odoriferous drugs ; and that the 

 use of fumigations of such, in the dove-cote, will not 

 only attract the pigeons *to their home, but allure 

 strangers, which may be wandering in search of a 

 habitation. 



