104 COLUMBAEIAN DISTINCTIONS. [CHAP. iv. 



the superiority and importance conferred by the pos- 

 session of a first-rate stock of Pigeons. The following 

 quotation will show the notions entertained on the sub- 

 ject by genteel people in 1765 : 



" It may not be amiss, before 1 conclude this head 

 (The Almond Tumbler), to remark a distinction which 

 the society of Columbarians make between Pigeon- 

 fanciers and Pigeon-keepers, viz., such gentlemen who 

 keep good of the sort, whether they are almond, black- 

 mottled, or yellow-mottled Tumblers, Carriers, Powters, 

 Horsemen, Dragoons, Leghorn or Spanish Runts, Ja- 

 cobines, Barbs, Turbits, Owls, broad-tailed Shakers, 

 Nuns, Spots, Trumpeters, &c., are stiled fanciers ; on 

 the contrary, those who keep trash are called Pigeon- 

 keepers, of which last denomination there are a sur- 

 prising number. It is prodigiously amazing and un- 

 accountable, that any gentleman will bestow food upon 

 such as are not in reality worth the tares they devour, 

 and can be accounted for no other way than by sup- 

 posing such gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the 

 true properties and perfections of the several species 

 they entertain, which, it must be confessed, is rather a 

 harsh supposition (except they breed for the spit only, 

 and even then their table might be as amply supplied by the 

 better sort), the expense of keeping either being equal 

 in every respect, the difference arising only in the pur- 

 chase of one pair. Should any objection be made to 

 the expence of the first purchase of the better sort, I 

 answer it is infinitely cheaper to bestow four or five 

 guineas on one pair of good birds, than to begin with 

 bad ones at eighteen-pence a pair, the value of which 

 can never be enhanced. I hope I need not here apolo- 

 gize, or be thought ill-natured by those gentlemen 



