BRITISH BIRDS. 101 



though friendly to the Ring-Dove, says that it injures the rising crop of 

 clover considerably. 



"The ' Pigeon ' was a tavern at Charing Cross in 1675 (' City Mercury,' 

 Nov. 4, 1675). The ' Three Pigeons ' were very common : there still exists 

 an inn of this name at Brentford. It is a house of interest— in all likelihood 

 one of the few haunts of Shakespeare now remaining— as being, indeed, the 

 sole Ehzabethan tavern existing in England, which, in the absence of direct 

 evidence, may fairly be presumed to have been occasionally visited by him 

 (Halhwell's ' Local Illustration of the Merry Wives of Windsor'). It was 

 kept at one time by Lowin, one of the original actors in Shakespeare's plays, 

 and is often named by the old dramatists. Bat Pidgeon, the famous hair- 

 dresser, immortalized by the ' Spectator,' lived at the sign of the ' Three 

 Pigeons ' in the corner house of St. Clement's Churchyard, next to the 

 Strand. There he remained as late as 1740, when he cut the boyish locks 

 of Pennant." — History of Sign-hoards, hy Larwood and Hotten, p. 218. 



Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier, in the 'Field' (Sept. 7, 1872, p. 248), in an 

 article on Gallinaceous and Columbine Birds, corrects Mr. Yarrell, and says : 

 — " If the reader will turn to Yarrell's ' British Birds ' (vol. ii. p. 280) he 

 will find it stated that the parent birds feed their offspring by ' inserting 

 their own beak between the mandibles of the young bird, and thus furnish 

 them with a soft pulpy mass which is already half-digested.' The old 

 bird does not insert its beak between the mandibles of the young one, but 

 vice versd ; and the food is never half- digested, for the crop is not a diges- 

 tive organ ; it is either the curdy secretion or pulse or grain, that is dis- 

 gorged as soon as possible after the old bird has fed." Mr. Tegetmeier 

 says also in this instructive article : — "Pigeons lay never more than two*, 

 and in many cases only one egg. This paucity of eggs is connected with 

 the mode of nourishing the young." 



* " The Passenger Pigeon, and the fruit-eating Pigeons of the genus Carpophaga, as far as 

 has hitherto heen observed, lay one egg, forming an exception to the general rule which obtains 

 in this group, called Bipositores." — Guide to the Zoological Gardens, 1875, p. 6. 



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