50 PIGEON LAW. [CHAP. ii. 



repealed former Acts, tells us, " And be it enacted, 

 That if any person shall unlawfully and wilfully kill, 

 wound, or take any House-dove or Pigeon, under such 

 circumstances as shall not amount to larceny at com- 

 mon law ; every such offender, being convicted thereof 

 before a justice of the peace, shall forfeit and pay over 

 and above the value of the bird, any sum not exceeding 

 two pounds" By the 67th sect, of the same Act, the 

 magistrates may, in case of default in payment of value 

 and penalty, commit for any term not exceeding two 

 months. 



A lord of a manor may build a Dove-cote upon his 

 land, parcel of his manor ; but a servant of the manor 

 cannot do it without licence. 



It hath been adjudged that erecting a Dove-house is 

 not a common nuisance, nor presentable in the leet. 



*[f Pigeons come upon my land and I kill them, the 

 owner hath no remedy against me ; though I may be 

 liable to the statutes which make it penal to destroy 

 them. 



Doves in a Dove-house, young and old, shall go to 

 the heir, and not to the executor. 



The reader will now have had enough law, unless he 

 be one of those foolish persons who are amateurs of it, 

 and cannot live without it. This part of the subject 

 shall be concluded with Varro's account of his Dove- 

 cote, just before the commencement of the Christian 

 era. 



" The n^to-TE^wv, or Pigeon-house, is made like a 

 large pent-house (testudo), covered with an arched roof, 

 having one narrow entrance, with Carthaginian shutters, 

 or wider ones, latticed on each side, that the whole 

 place may be light, and that no serpent, or other 



