riGEONB. 



may breed the faster for thia treatment, and if the pigeon- 

 keeper does not object to see his birds afflicted with unsightly 

 skin disease, and liable to sadden death, I will guarantee them 

 at least two more broods a year thajl their neighbotirs. One 

 chick will be hatched six or eight hours before the other, 

 I know of nothing so perfectly helpless aS a baby pigeon. 

 They have just sufficient instinct to hold up their little naked 

 heads and wave it about feebly in search of the mother's bill, 

 and that is all. 



During the last few days of sitting, the crops of both male 

 and female pigeon gradually fill with " soft meat," or, as it 

 might with propriety be termed, milk — ^pigeon's milk ! Al- 

 though not a marketable commodity, we have the authority of 

 Doctor Hunter that there really is such a liquid as pigeon's 

 milk. The learned doctor says, " I have, in my inquiries 

 concerning the various modes in which young animals are 

 nourished, discovered that all the dove-kind are endowed with 

 a similar power. The young pigeon, like the young quad- 

 ruped, till it is capable of digesting the common food of its 

 kind, is fed with a substance, secreted for that purpose, by the 

 parent animal ; not as in the mammalia, by the female alone, 

 but also by the male, which, perhaps, furnishes the nourish- 

 ment in a degree more abundant. It is a common property of 

 birds, that both male and female are equally employed in 

 hatching and feeding their young in the second stage; but 

 this mode of nourishment, by means of a substance secreted 

 in their own bodies, is peculiar to certain kinds, and is carried 

 on in the crop. Whatever may be the consistence of this 

 substance when just secreted, it must probably soon be coagu- 

 lated into a granulated white curd, for in such a form I 

 have always found it in the crop; and if an old pigeon is 

 killed, just as the young ones are hatched, the crop wiU be 

 found as above described, and in its cavity pieces of white curd 

 mixed with some of the common food of the pigeon. If we 

 allow either of the parents to feed the young, its crop, when 

 examined, will be diseovered to contain the same curdled sub-) 

 stance, which passes thence into the stomach, where it is to be 

 digested. 



" The young pigeon is fed for some time with this substance 

 alone, aiid about the third day, some of the common food is 

 found mingled with it; and as the pigeon grows older, the 

 proportion of common food is increased ; so that by the time 

 it is seven, eight, or nine days eld, the secretion oS the curd 



