EXPERIENCE OF PROMINENT WASHINGTON PUBLIC MAN 
BREEDING PLYMOUTH ROCK HOMERS 
I wish you would send me an outfit of your Extra 
Plymouth Rock Homers, mated and banded. I want 
to see how they will turn out. I have already 
quite a large lot of pigeons but they are doing 
so poorly that I do not expect to keep them. I 
expect better results from the ones which I order. 
The letters from customers printed in this book are evidence of the wide- 
spread interest on the American continent in squab breeding not only for 
revenue and for one’s table, but also as a pastime and instructive hobby. 
It will not be forgotten that the master mind of Charles Darwin evolved 
“The Origin of Species’’ from-pigeon breeding. The ideas he conceived and 
the laws he discovered might have been worked out with other animals, but 
not within the span of his lifetime, with the thoroughness he accomplished, 
because pigeons breed rapidly, and in other respects are ideal for experiment. 
Prominent in political life at Washington are customers who give part of 
their spare time enthusiastically to this work. One of these ordered of us 
in January, 1908, as indicated by the letter printed at the top of this page. 
The next letter was as follows: ; 
I am greatly pleased with the birds sent me, and 
they seem to be all that you have said in regard 
to them. 
We wrote him in December, 1908, to interest him in our Carneaux, and 
received the following letter: 
I have your letter of some days ago in regard to 
the Homers you sent me. They were very fine, and 
I was well pleased with them. One disaster after 
another has followed these birds until now I have 
none left. First, an owl got in among them and 
pulled heads off, which was followed by some other 
misfortune. I shall never experiment here again 
with them, but when I retire from the field of my 
labors and go back home, I certainly intend to 
keep pigeons. I thank you very much for calling 
my attention to your new Plymouth Rock Carneaux. 
We are not at liberty to print the writer’s name. We call attention to 
this to point the moral that serious-minded men of large affairs turn to 
squab raising with lively and sustained interest. (Incidentally, another 
moral is, Beware of owls !) 
300 
