POULTRY. 385 



her affair, and not ours ; and if she chooses to let the hen occa- 

 sionally " wear the breeches " and crow, and 



" Mothers monsters prove," 



and if she permits the cock to become tender-hearted, and warm- 

 breasted, and philoprogenitive, and a nursing father, gentle as 

 a " sucking dove," the committee have nothing to say against it. 

 TVc say nothing of the practical good to be derived from an 

 extensive cultivation of fancy birds of any sort ; yet, as a 

 pleasant accompaniment about the house and barn, equally in- 

 teresting to the "old folks at home" and to the "bonnie 

 bairns " about the homestead, nothing surpasses the race of 

 the Columbida3 ; and they have been kept and cosseted in all 

 time, and consecrated as emblems of innocence, harmlessness 

 and peace, disposed to " rough and tumble " only in their 

 name. They are almost sacred birds, and seem to have been 

 so regarded from the earliest antiquity. Noah, after his forty 

 days' wandering upon a " sea without a shore," where 



" Angels did tire their wings, but found no spot whereon to rest," — Byron, 



felt his first flush of hope when his returning dove brought the 

 olive token in its mouth. So, too, throughout the records of 

 the first dispensation, we find them chosen offerings in the tem- 

 ple services of the Jews ; and in the second, and perfected, and 

 crowning dispensation of God to man, the dove was the sacred 

 emblem of the Holy Spirit, resting upon the well-beloved Son 

 when 



" O'er his head, that humbly bent, 

 The Baptist poured the wave." — Fletcher. 



Equally, too, was it held in veneration by the Gentile nations ; 

 and the poetry of Greece and Rome is filled with allusions to 

 the dove, and always, as in the sacred writings, as emblematic 

 of affection, innocence, and love. 



Glorious old Virgil, who, in the midst of a corrupt, and de- 

 bauched, and licentious age, wrote not a line " which, dying, he 

 could wish to blot," and whose poetry we put, without hesita- 

 tion, into the hands of our children at school, has made fre- 

 quent allusions to the dove, and always in a delightful way. 

 Who can forget what Melibceus says to Tityrus ? — 



•49 



