6 BOMBAY DUCKS 



so helpless as it appears, otherwise the species would 

 long ago have become extinct. 



When doves are not cooing they usually sit half 

 asleep on a telegraph wire, exposed to the gaze of every 

 bird of prey in the vicinity ; yet I have never seen a 

 dove carried off by any of the pirates of the air. How 

 is this ? It is not that doves are inedible ; dove pie is 

 not at all a bad dish. I speak as one having authority, 

 although I do so with bated breath, for fear of disturb- 

 ing in their graves Byron, Prior, Shelley, Thomson, and 

 all the other admirers of the dove. I repeat, I speak as 

 one with authority, for I was once sent to an arid and 

 inhospitable district in India where butchers and bakers 

 were non-existent and shikar there was none. 



I was therefore restricted to a diet of chapatti and 

 dove, varied occasionally by a pea-chick, marked down 

 and shot sleeping after the shades of night had fallen, so 

 as not to offend the susceptibilities of the unsophisticated 

 villager. In some parts of India the peacock is ac- 

 counted sacred. Dove's flesh is a trifle insipid, but in 

 every way preferable to ddk bungalow fowl, while young 

 pea-chick is equal to Christmas turkey, but an old pea- 

 cock is the dickens ! 



Doves are in many ways beautiful birds, but their 

 beauty is not appreciated in India. In the first place, 

 they are to us common, everyday creatures, and human 

 nature is so constituted that it is unable to admire any 

 object which it sees daily. Then doves, as a rule, are 

 not showy. To quote " Eha " : " They rarely carry any 

 meretricious ornament, such as crests, or trains, or fancy 

 plumes, but they are all beautiful, and some of them 



