OPINIONS DAMAGE TO CORN. 149 



so considerable a part of their crops. Last year, a 

 farmer in Kent shot a wood-pigeon, from the crop 

 of which he extracted nine hundred and twenty-six 

 clavels of wheat, which he sowed, and obtained from 

 them a harvest of one gallon three quarts of fine 

 wheat. 



No man, in the least acquainted with country 

 affairs, but is fully aware of the immense damage done 

 to the crops of corn, beans, pease, and tares, that 

 is to say, the grand articles of human subsistence, by 

 pigeons. Our best practical agricultural writers may 

 be consulted on this head, but a sufficient proof of the 

 fact is the reduction of dove-cots throughout all coun- 

 tries where agriculture is best known, valued, and 

 practised. Indeed, the feudal laws in favour of these 

 birds were a most cruel and fertile source of oppres- 

 sion. Every one will judge for himself of the degree 

 of credit to be given to the following statement, ex- 

 tracted from Mr. Vancouver's valuable survey of the 

 county of Devon. 



Pigeons often fly to a great distance for their 

 food, and when they can find corn to eat, seldom 

 prey upon any thing 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 two hun- 

 dred and eighty days, or better than three quarters 

 of the year ; the rest of the time they live upon the 

 seeds of the weeds and bentings. It is somewhere 

 stated, that in England and in Wales there are 

 twenty thousand DOVE-HOUSES, averaging each at 

 H 3 



