6 BOMBAY DUCKS 
so helpless as it appears, otherwise the species would 
long ago have become extinct. 
When doves are not cooing they usually sit half 
asleep on a telegraph wire, exposed to the gaze of every 
bird of prey in the vicinity; yet I have never seen a 
dove carried off by any of the pirates of the air. How 
is this? It is not that doves are inedible; dove pie is 
not at all a bad dish. I speak as one having authority, 
although I do so with bated breath, for fear of disturb- 
ing in their graves Byron, Prior, Shelley, Thomson, and 
all the other admirers of the dove. I repeat, I speak as 
one with authority, for I was once sent to an arid and 
inhospitable district in India where butchers and bakers 
were non-existent and skzkar there was none. 
I was therefore restricted to a diet of chapattd and 
dove, varied occasionally by a pea-chick, marked down 
and shot sleeping after the shades of night had fallen, so 
as not to offend the susceptibilities of the unsophisticated 
villager. In some parts of India the peacock is ac- 
counted sacred. Dove’s flesh is a trifle insipid, but in 
every way preferable to dé% bungalow fowl, while young 
pea-chick is equal to Christmas turkey, but an old pea- 
cock is the dickens ! 
Doves are in many ways beautiful birds, but their 
beauty is not appreciated in India. In the first place, 
they are to us common, everyday creatures, and human 
nature is so constituted that it is unable to admire any 
object which it sees daily. Then doves, as a rule, are 
not showy. To quote “Eha”: “They rarely carry any 
meretricious ornament, such as crests, or trains, or fancy 
plumes, but they are all beautiful, and some of them 
