20 PIGEONS. 



grain, by the side of the mouth, which occasions inflammation and swelling of 

 the basal margins of the mandibles. When a boy, I had a young Rock Dove, 

 which I fed for some time in this manner, until the bill became tumid and sore, 

 when, in consequence of advice from a friend, I took a mouthful of barley and 

 water, and introduced the pigeon's bill, when the bird soon satisfied itself, flapping 

 its wings gently and uttering a low cry all the while. It grew up vigorously, shed 

 the yellow down-tips of its feathers, and began to fly about. Towards the middle 

 of autumn it renewed its plumage, and assumed the bright and beautiful tints 

 of the adult male. Whenever I escaped from the detested pages of Virgil and 

 Horace, the pigeon was sure to fly to me, and sometimes alighted on my head or 

 shoulder, directing its bill towards my mouth, and flapping its wings. Nor did it 

 ever fly off with the wild pigeons, which almost every day fed near the house, 

 although it had no companions of its own species. At length some fatal whim 

 induced it to make an excursion to a village about a mile distant, when it alighted 

 on the roof of a hut, and the boys pelted it dead with stones. Long and true 

 was my sorrow for my lost companion, the remembrance of which will probably 

 continue as long as life. I have since mourned the loss of a far dearer dove. 

 They were gentle and lovely beings ; but while the one has been blended with the 

 elements, the other remains ' hid with Christ in God,' and for it I ' mourn not 

 as those who have no hope.' 



" The young, which at first are covered with loose yellow down, are when 

 fledged of the same colour as the old birds, the head and neck, however, being of a 

 dull purplish-blue, without the bright green and purple tints of the old, and the 

 wings tinged with brown. At the first moult, they acquire their full colouring, 

 only that a little brown remains on the edge of the wings. 



" They are easily tamed when taken young; yet it is said that when not par- 

 ticularly attended to, and supplied with abundance of food, they are more apt to 

 fly away and join the flocks of their own species, than the common tame pigeon. 

 They are seen in large flocks in the winter and spring months, when they frequent 

 barn-yards much for food, especially when the ground is covered with snow. I 

 have also seen them in large groups in the harvest-time, when that happened late 

 in the year. 



" The crops of three obtained from Shetland were examined and found to be 

 completely filled, up to the throat ; that of the first with a mixture of barley 

 and oats of the same species as mentioned above, namely, bear and the small oat, 

 with a considerable number of what appeared to be eggs of snails or Helices, being 

 globular, dusky, a twelfth of an inch in diameter, their envelope membranous, and 

 their contents a whitish fluid of the consistency of pus ; along with these sub- 

 stances were fragments of pods of Eajthanus Raphanistrum. The crop of the 

 second was crammed with oats, among which were a few seeds, apparently of 

 polygona, and fragments of charlock pods. That of the third contained oat-seeds 

 exclusively. In the gizzards were numerous fragments of quartz, generally white, 

 but some tinged with chlorite, and a few of felspar and either gneiss or granite. 



