84 Pigeons and Ali, x\bout Them. 



months, j'oung Pigeons make very nice eating — 

 either roasted and served with bread sauce and 

 crumbs, after the manner of partridge or pheasant, 

 OT under a nice brown pie-crust. After the age of 

 two months their flesh becomes hard and stringy, 

 amd is not so succulent or appetising. Therefore, 

 never hesitate to kill your wasters earh-. 



"But how am I to know which are my wasters?" 

 I hear some of my 3'oung friends sslv. Quite true ; 

 you will not know what to kill and what to leave to 

 grow and mature. Therefore, my advice to you is to 

 seek out some other fancier in j'our immediate 

 neighbourhood who has some experience, and ask 

 him to gO' through your stock with you. Under his 

 guidance and counsel 5'ou Virill soon leam which to 

 keep and which to reject. If it should happen that 

 3^011 are so situated that you cannot find anyone to 

 advise you, well then, j'ou must trust to your own 

 knowledge and instinct, or else let all grow up to- 

 gether, the good and the bad. If, however, you 

 have an3' idea at all of the varietj^ j^ou are keeping 

 \'ou will be able to pick out those that are real 

 wasters. For instance, in Dragoons, it would be 

 useless keeping a \'er3' down-faced, spindle^-- beaked 

 j'oungster ; in Homers or Tumblers, birds with coarse 

 light ceres are useless, except for cooking; Jacobins 

 with split hoods and very thin broken chains ; Fan- 

 tails wnth wi-y tails, uneven gappy tails, no action, 

 and long legs; Magpies and Tumblers badly mis- 

 marked, or wrong in head structure; Turbits and 

 Owls with narrow skulls, fine beaks, and pinched 

 faces are all amongst those that should be killed. 

 They are only cumbcrers of the ground, eating good 

 food which should be consumed by better birds, and 

 depriving those better birds of the greater amount of 

 fresh air and exercise-space which they should have. 



CH.ANGINC, MATES. 



By the time the second round is a fortnight old, 

 the breeder will have seen enough to be able to form 

 some idea of the results of the difi^erent experimental 

 matin.gs which have been made. In some cases they 



