74 NATIONAL STANDARD SQUAB BOOK 
breeding. What you do not do, and what you try to prevent, 
is the mating of the offspring of pair number one (or any other 
pair) to each other. So, you see, if you have a dozen or two 
pairs, you need never inbreed, for there is an infinite variety 
of matings possible. Breeders of animals sometimes inbreed 
purposely in order to get better color of fur or plumage, or 
finer bones, etc. There are no brothers and sisters in the 
flocks we sell. If you buy one dozen or twenty dozen pairs 
of breeders of us, the pairs will be unrelated, and you need 
never inbreed. We never heard a real pigeon breeder worry 
much about inbreeding, because the likelihood of it in a flock 
of even a dozen pairs is extremely remote, as we have demon- 
strated above. 
PIGEONS IN ST. MARK’S SQUARE, VENICE. 
Get acquainted with the pigeons which you ay of us, and let them get ac- 
-quainted with you. eg will work all the better for being tame and docile. These 
igeons in Venice are fed by tourists on corn only. A peddler selling whole corn 
‘or two cents a package sits all day long on the steps at the base of the monument. 
Several photographers in the square make a specialty of taking pictures of tourists 
feeding the pigeons; snap shots by amateurs are constantly being made. In this 
city of canals, these pigeons fete grit, in fact nothing but the corn, and they would 
die if obliged to pick up a living for themselves. They are healthy, proving the 
incorrectness of the assertion that a feed of nothing but corn will cause canker. 
They are small, however, of stunted growth. They are so tame that they will perch 
on your hand and eat grains of corn held in your lips. 
