RING DOVE. 279 



chaste, in allusion to the conjugal fidelity of the bird ; and 

 Mr. Booth in his Analytical Dictionary, says, " Pigeons of 

 all kinds are understood to be particularly faithful in their 

 loves. In courtship they salute with their bills, and mur- 

 inur, or coo, their notes of pleasure. The male and female 

 sit by turns while hatching, and alternately feed their 

 young. They are not the birds of a busy and turbulent 

 world, they have no gall-bladder, and, therefore, the secre- 

 tions of the liver are, it is supposed, never converted into 

 black bile : a fluid which has, in all ages, been associated 

 with the irritable passions of mankind. Doves were sacred 

 among the priests of antiquity. They drew the car of the 

 celestial Venus, and were the messengers of the will of the 

 gods. It was a Dove (ever since sacred to peace) that 

 brought the olive branch to the ark of Noah, for which she 

 has her place among the constellations ; and the Christian 

 world still personate the Holy Spirit under the mystic 

 emblem of a Dove." 



The feeling in favour of Doves and Pigeons in general, 

 receives further confirmation from the habits of the natives 

 of other countries. A writer in the fourth volume of the 

 Naturalist, says, " The Common Pigeon swarms in the city 

 of Petersburg and the country ; it is esteemed sacred, and 

 called God's Bird by the Russians, from the circumstance 

 of the Holy Spirit assuming that form when it descended 

 upon our Saviour. To kill and eat it is considered an 

 act of profanation. I had one day an opportunity of ob- 

 serving, myself, how the respect for the Pigeon prevails 

 amongst the lower orders. I shot six, away from a village, 

 at one shot, and brought them home, with the intention of 

 obtaining that master-achievement of modern cookery, a 

 pigeon-pie; when I threw them on the table, a Russian 

 servant who was near, after several ejaculations against my 



