150 QUANTITIES DEVOURED CALCULATED. 



about one hundred pair of old pigeons. We will 

 take this estimation at three-fourths, which will equal 

 one million one hundred and twenty-five thousand 

 pairs of dove-house pigeons in England and Wales. 

 These, to speak moderately, will consume, with what 

 they carry home to their young, one pint of corn 

 per pair daily, and which, for one hundred and forty 

 days, being half the period they are supposed to 

 subsist upon corn, amounts to one hundred and fifty- 

 seven millions five hundred thousand pints of corn 

 consumed annually, throughout England and Wales, 

 by these voracious and insatiate vermin, for in no 

 other light can they be considered by the agricul- 

 turist. 



The amount and value of this consumption, when 

 brought into the present price of wheat, rye, barley, 

 oats, beans, and pease, and assuming that an equal 

 quantity of each corn is thus consumed, but which 

 is far from being the case, as wheat is not only the 

 most inviting but by far the most exposed to the 

 ravages of these birds, both at the seed time and 

 preceding harvest, will stand thus 157,500,000 

 pints 4,921,875 Winchester bushels, which at 6s. 

 per bushel, the present average price of the grain 

 before enumerated, amounts to 1,476,562. 10s. 

 value of the agricultural produce of the country 

 consumed in this manner. To which is to be added, 

 the irreparable injury committed by pigeons in seed 

 time, by picking up every grain of seed, wherever 

 they alight, and the corn trod under and beaten out 

 by their wings before harvest, not to forget the real 

 damage they do to buildings, by pecking the mortar 



