36 



addle, or otherwise, you ought to give them a pair, or at least one young 

 one to feed oif their moist meat, which would else make them sick, and 

 they will be apt to lay again too soon, which will weaken them very 

 much. 



57. — The young ones being thus ushered into the world, naturally 

 leads us to take a view of the manner in which it receives its first suste- 

 nance. We have already mentioned soft meat, which is nothing else but 

 a fine soft liquid pap prepared as it were by instinct by the parents, by a 

 dissolution of the hard grains in their craw, against the time that the 

 foetus is first disclosed, when weak, naked, and helpless ; this soft meat 

 they throw up out of their craw, taking the beak of their young ones in 

 their own, and by this means injecting it into theirs ; with this meat 

 they continue feeding them for six or seven days, when they begin to mix 

 some harder food amongst it, until at length they feed them with all whole 

 grain. 



THEIE DIET. 



58. — We come now to treat of their diet, or the food proper for 

 Pigeons. (*) The Pigeon is a granivorous bird, and may be fed with 

 various sorts of grains, as tares, horse-beans, pease, wheat, barley, hemp- 

 seed, or rape and canary, of each of which in their order, (-j-) 



59. — Of all grains, tares are found to be most adapted to these birds, 

 and old tares are much the best, for the new are very apt to set your 

 Pigeons into a scouring, especially the young ones ; the same will like- 

 wise happen from old tares, if they have by any means been touched or 

 immersed in salt or sea water ; for though Pigeons love salt, yet too much 

 is very pernicious, as for instance, if in a voyage you give them salt 

 water instead of fresh you will soon kill them. 



60. — Horse-beans are the next food to tares, but you must take care to 

 get them as small as possible; there are a sort which they call small 

 French ticks, which are good food, and somewhat cheaper than tares, but 

 liable to two inconveniences ; first, they are much harder of digestion, and 

 consequently, will not so readily make soft meat for the young ones. 

 Secondly, your Pigeons are sometimes apt to be choaked with them, 

 especially young ones, and such whose oesophagus or gullet is any ways 

 inclinable to be small, as in most long necked Pigeons it is. I had a 

 carrier the other day, which fell down off my house into the yard, and 

 when it was taken up, (I not being at home) it gaped, as I was informed, 

 as if for want of breath, and died in a few minutes. It was very fat, and 

 seemingly in good health ; I opened it, to see if I could find any cause 

 from within, but all its internals seemed perfectly sound and in good 



* 68. (GiBTiN, p. 113.) — The common Pigeon gives but little trouble, yet the fancy 

 birds require a great deal of attendance. 



+ 68. (Matob, p. 27.) — The late grand duke of Tuscany, who was a very great 

 Pancier, used to feed them with the stones of grapes, which in that country are very 

 plentiftd and caU them together by ringing a bell. 



68 to 64.— See J. M. Eaton's Ahnond Tumbler, paragraphs 550 to 55i, *' With re- 

 gard," &c. 



