148 BUNTS AND TEUMPETEES. [CHAP. iv. 



open, and exposed to the easterly winds, with no other 

 fence but a net, which kept them confined. Care should 

 be taken of their young ones, for they rear but few in 

 the season, if left to bring them up themselves ; there- 

 fore it would be most proper to shift their eggs under a 

 Dragoon, or some other good nurse, remembering to 

 give them a young one to feed off their soft meat ; if 

 this method be pursued, they will breed very well. 



" I have had a hen of the Leghorn breed that weighed 

 two pounds two ounces avoirdupois weight; and have 

 killed of their young ones which, when on the spit, 

 were as large as middling spring fowls. It should be 

 observed that these, and all other Runts, increase in 

 bulk, till they are three or four years old. As to their 

 feathers, they are various, but the best that T have seen 

 were either white, black, or red-mottled. Leghorn 

 Runts are more valued than any other sort of Runts, 

 though there is a vast difference in them ; some of them 

 being very bad ones, though brought from Leghorn." 



There does not appear to be any great distinction be- 

 tween the Leghorn, Spanish, and Roman Runts. Some 

 of the latter are so big and heavy that they can hardly 

 fly, which circumstance, if not the result of domestica- 

 tion, would account for their disappearance in a wild 

 state. 



The Runt was well known to Aldrovandi. He gives 

 a woodcut of it, rude, but characteristic, and with the 

 tail famously tucked up. The Trumpeter belongs to 

 that family of extra-sized Pigeons, the Runts, which 

 are so little valued in this country, although speci- 

 mens, when to be met with, are rarely cheap. It is 

 a bird which many would call ugly, but is of striking 

 appearance, from being so much larger than the Pigeons 



