98 PIGEONS. 



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MY FIRST PIGEON RACE. 



BY W. B. TEGETMETEK. 



The desire for the practical study of natural history, which has been a ruling 

 passion with me from my early youth, was sadly interfered with during many of 

 the years of my boyhood by a long-continued residence in the metropolis. Never- 

 theless, even under the disadvantages of a London life, I followed my favourite 

 science with a zeal and devotion that might have furnished Professor Craik, had 

 he but known me, with the subject of an additional chapter in his work on The 

 Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. 



As I could not study the objects of my delightful pursuit in their native 

 haunts, I sought them in the bird-shops of Seven Dials and the purlieus of 

 Westminster. The front area of my father's house was covered with a cord 

 netting of my own making, for wire netting was then unknown ; and a choice 

 collection of thrushes and other hardy British birds gladdened the neighbourhood 

 with their song. The possession of pigeons, however, — the objects of my most 

 absorbing passion, — was forbidden. The decoration of the paternal roof with a 

 " dormer," an " area," " traps," and all the appurtenances of pigeon-flying, so 

 familiar to those persons who travel by the Great Eastern Railway, and from their 

 high pre-eminence look down on the Spitalfields weavers and their birds, was not 

 to be thought of on the residence of a respectable surgeon in the Royal Navy 

 within a hundred yards of St. James's Street. But "where there's a will 

 there's away." Our "doctor's boy" lived in Westminster, over against Tothill 

 Fields Prison. I knew the place well; for with childish curiosity I had on 

 several occasions followed the long string of prisoners, men, women, and even 

 children, that, handcuffed to a chain, and under the charge of two red-waist- 

 coated officers, passed our house every afternoon on their way from Marlborough 

 Street Police Court to the prison. There were ho police-vans with drivers in 

 mock military uniforms in those days. 



Our boy was a pigeon-fancier, and had a good flight of homing birds, many 



