122 PIGEONS. 



are very liable to be broken by the pressure of sitting on, and frequently stick to 

 their breasts and prevent them sitting any longer; when this happens, their 

 breasts must be thoroughly cleansed from the adhesive quality of the broken egg, 

 and another egg given them immediately ; and if the cock is put on to it, he 

 will in general sit very kindly, and the hen, coming to seek for him, and finding 

 him sitting, will take her turn, as if nothing had happened. At the expiration 

 of their time for sitting, they must be provided with a young one to feed off their 

 soft meat. 



" The Almond Tumblers will, if in good health, breed from the time of pairing 

 them till the months of October or November, but I think they should be parted 

 in October, as soon as they can feed off the young ones they then have to bring 

 up ; for the fancier will find great difficulty in raising any of them after this time, 

 as the weather gets very cold, and the nights long, so that they are frequently 

 deserted and left to the severity of the weather, not sufficiently fed, by which a 

 cold will come on, with a running at the nose, or roop, and baffle all the fancier's 

 art to get the better of, and the bird will die. If he should happen to raise any 

 of this description, the chances are greatly against their surviving the winter, and 

 if they do, they will most likely be such weakly birds that the fancier will repent 

 having bestowed so much time and trouble upon them. 



" On the seventeenth day from the hen's having laid her last egg, and the 

 young ones begin to hatch, much attention is now necessary to be paid by him, 

 and a little judicious assistance is sometimes requisite to assist the young bird in 

 extricating itself from its prison-house, and particularly in the spring, when the 

 young ones, even in the shell, are more delicate and weakly than they are at a 

 later period of the season, and consequently less able to disengage themselves. 

 If an egg does not spring or chip by the time it ought — viz., in the course of the 

 seventeenth day — the fancier should hold it to his ear, and if the young one makes 

 a crackling kind of noise, and that pretty briskly, he may conclude it will soon 

 chip ; when it has so chipped, if the young one should not proceed in its 

 endeavours to break the shell as much as the fancier thinks it ought to have done 

 in the time, and does not continue to make so brisk a noise, it is a sure sign that 

 the young one is weakly, and almost exhausted, and requires immediate assistance. 

 In that case, he should gently dent his thumb or finger-nail, or the head of a 

 pin, in a circle round the egg, in the same manner as if it had been done from 

 within by the beak of the young one itself, remembering to let in a little air, 

 which may be safely done at the part where the bird first springs the shell, that 

 being the part where its beak lies, and no blood will issue from it, by which means 

 it will be greatly assisted in extricating itself, and many a valuable bird may be 

 thus saved. Particular care should be taken not to pick a hole in any other part 

 of the shell than above mentioned, or make it bleed, as the least effusion of blood 

 will be fatal to the foetus ; but if it has been moving about in the shell so long as 

 to have absorbed all the moisture or blood, and has, by its circuitous motion, 

 rolled up the little caul or membrane in which it is enveloped whilst in the egg, 



