88 



PIGEONS. 



subjected to too severe exertions, it becomes easily exhausted ; and at the age of 

 four or five years, when it ought to possess its greatest vigour, it begins to decline, 

 a journey of moderate length tires it, and if it does not remain on the road, it can 

 scarcely follow even the last of those in the flight. 



" I much prefer the system of those amateurs who the first year submit their 

 young pigeons to only short trials, allow them to form and develop during the 

 second, and not until the third year permit them to make a journey of 300 to 400 

 miles. Thus they always possess good birds, which can with advantage take part 

 in the contests where long distances are flown. 



" Though various plans are followed with regard to the training of the young 

 pigeons of the year in the different societies, it is not so with regard to the old 

 ones ; that is to say, the pigeons of four or five years old, which it is proposed to 

 employ in the contests. It is an almost universal rule that these last, after three or 

 four daily trials, should make the journey from Paris to Belgium before being sent 

 to any more distant place. This rule is not, however, without exception, and some 

 experienced amateurs omit the flight from Paris from their training. When the 

 weather is favourable this journey is mere play for the pigeons, but if the wind is 

 contrary, or circumstances are unfavourable, it fatigues them much, and may be 

 prejudicial to them when the day of the contest comes — a day on which each bird 

 ought to possess all its physical strength. 



" This consideration leads us to inquire into the conditions under which a pigeon 

 is best fitted to take part in the contests. 



"As the great races take place in the second half of the month of July, it is 

 desirable that the moulting of the birds should be retarded as much as possible. 

 Indeed, at this time one frequently sees many pigeons which have only three or 

 four of the largest winged feathers to lose. This condition is to be lamented on 

 two grounds : first, the absence of a large feather is more unfavourable than that 

 of a small one, the long feathers increase in length from the inner to the outer 

 ones, so that the second is more important than the third, and so on ; in the 

 second place, when the pigeon has arrived at the stage of its moult that there are 

 only three or four feathers left, it is on the point of losing its scalpulary feathers 

 and its wing coverts ; the fall of these last constantly takes place in a rapid 

 manner, and it may be so much accelerated by the short imprisonment of the 

 birds in the baskets in which they are carried, that when they are set at liberty 

 they may be found entirely deprived of an important instrument of flight. By 

 chance a bird far in advance in its moult may succeed in gaining a victory, but 

 such cases are exceptional, and wih\occur more rarely the more laborious the flight. 

 A pigeon which has only commenced its moult, and has lost but three or 

 four of its feathers, possesses a wing without gaps, and is in more favourable 

 condition. 



" The majority of fanciers have more confidence in male than in female birds ; 

 ordinarily, three-fourths of the birds employed in a flight are males — not that 

 females are less faithful or less rapid than males, but because they are less often 



