178 UTILITY OF PIGEONS'. 



and to give them the early habit of fond- 

 ness for animals, and of setting a value on 

 them, which, as I have often observed, is a 

 very great thing. For the man to be trust- 

 worthy in this respect, the boy must have 

 been in the habit of being kind and consid- 

 erate towards animals ; and nothing is so 

 likely to give him that excellent habit as 

 his seeing from his very birth animals taken 

 great care of, and treated with great kind- 

 ness by his parents, and now and then hav- 

 ing a little thing to call his own" 



It may be amusing to compare this pas- 

 sage, marked by the impress of a masculine 

 mind, with the following from a French 

 poultry book, which is so eminently French 

 that it would suffer by a translation : " Est il 

 quelqu'un qui, dans sa vie n'ait pas desire 

 quelque fois d'etre pigeon ? de gouter les 

 plaisirs d'un naturel si doux, d'une fidelite 

 si tendre ? Voici done les plus heureux com- 

 me les plus aimables etres dont je me sois 

 occupee jusqu' alors, et mon travail m'occu- 

 pera agreablement." 



When only a few pigeons are kept, they 



