BOOK OF DOVECOTES 



qualified as above, unless its owner possessed 

 at least fifty arpents of land. Other steps in 

 the same direction regulated the number of 

 nest-holes permitted, proportioning them to 

 the size of the domain ; called for proofs of 

 immemorial possession, or for the production 

 of good title-deeds; or insisted that the dove- 

 cote should stand in the centre of its owner's 

 land, in order that his crops should be the first 

 to feel the pinch. But even these ameliora- 

 tions of an undoubted wrong failed to cure the 

 evil, and in 1 789 all France's dovecotes shared 

 — figuratively speaking — in the general fall. 

 But happily their fabric, in some cases, still 

 survives, and a few specially beautiful or in- 

 teresting examples call for notice. 



It is hardly necessary to say that, during the 

 days in which the dovecote flourished undis- 

 turbed in France, it was often the property 

 of some ecclesiastical establishment — abbey, 

 or priory, or a dependency of such; and it is in 

 the neighbourhood of these that we shall look, 

 not unsuccessfully, for some of the choicest 

 surviving examples. 



The French dovecote was frequently white- 

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