CHAP. IV.] POWTERS PECULIAEITIES. 123 



quill-feathers are almost always broken and shattered ; 

 and sometimes so bad, that they cannot fly." 



Smiters and Croppers, or something very like them, 

 must have been known and kept so long back even as 

 Pliny's time. " Nosse credas suos colores, varietatem- 

 que dispositam : quin etiam ex volatu quseritur plaudere 

 in ccelo, varieque sulcare. Qua in ostentatiorie, ut vinctaB, 

 praebentur accipitri, implicatis strepitu pennis, qui non 

 nisi ipsis alarum humeris eliditur." " You would think 

 they were conscious of their own colours, and the va- 

 riety with which they are disposed : nay, they even 

 attempt to make their flight a means of clapping in the 

 air, and tracing various courses in it. By which osten- 

 tation they are betrayed to the power of the Hawk, as 

 if bound, their feathers being entangled in the action 

 of making the noise, which is produced only by the 

 actual shoulders of their wings." * 



Powters are of various colours ; the most usual are 

 blue, buff (vulgd cloth), splashed in various mixtures, and 

 white. Pure white Powters are really handsome, and 

 look very like white Owls in their sober circlings around 

 the Pigeon-house. Apropos of the blue and the cloth- 

 coloured birds, a friend asks, " Have you ever observed 

 that if you pair a chestnut with a blue Pigeon, the cock 

 being, say the chestnut, the chances are that the young 

 cock is blue, and the hen chestnut, and their offspring 

 will come vice versa round again ? " H. H. This is a 

 curious alternation. 



Powters have deservedly a bad character as nurses, 

 and it is usual to put the eggs of valuable birds under 

 other Pigeons to hatch and rear ; but otherwise they are 



* Lib. x. 52. 



