LAYING AND HATCHING 71 
either by killing the parents or by remating. Usually the 
trouble comes from one parent bird, which you find by turning 
up the feathers and examining the skin. Having found the 
bird which is at fault, kill it. This point has come up con- 
tinually in our correspondence. The erroneous belief that 
white-feathered birds produce the whitest-skinned squabs 
seems to be widespread and we are asked sometimes for a 
flock of breeders ‘‘ all white.”’ Our experience with all white 
Homers is that they are smaller and have less stamina than 
the colored ones. The marketmen will take two cr three pairs 
of dark-skinned squabs in a bunch without comment, but 
an excess of dark ones will provoke a cut in price. Breeders 
who are shipping only the undressed squabs should pluck 
feathers now and then to see just what color of squabs they 
are getting. The dark-colored squabs are just as good eating 
as the light-colored ones, but buyers for the hotels and clubs, 
and those who visit the stalls, generally pick out the plump 
white-skinned squabs in preference to the plump dark-skinned 
ones. As a rule, squabs from Homer pigeons are white- 
skinned—the dark-colored squab is an exception. . 
Many beginners wish to know if it will be all right for them 
to buy a flock and keep it in one house for six months or a 
year, paying no attention to the mating or pairing of the 
young birds, but leaving that to themselves, so as to get 
without much trouble a large flock before the killing of the 
squabs for market begins. Certainly, you may do this, 
providing extra nest boxes from time to time until your 
squab house has been filled with nests; then you will have 
to provide overflow quarters. We are asked if the flock will 
not become weakened by inbreeding, that is, a brother bird 
mating up to a sister, by chance. According to the law of 
chances, such matings would take place not very often. 
Pigeons in a wild state, on the face of a cliff, or in an abandoned 
building, would pair by natural selection. The stronger 
bird gets the object of its affection, the weaker one is killed 
off or gets a weaker mate, whose young are shorter-lived, so 
the inevitable result is more strength and larger size. Nature 
works slowly, if surely. A lot of pigeons in one pen mating or 
pairing as they please when old enough is the natural way, 
and if you follow this, you cannot go very far wrong. We 
advocate matings by the breeder because it hurries Nature 
