(5 PIGEON. 



all of which will degenerate, equally with the domesticated animals, 

 on their return to a state of nature. 



Pigeons rarely lay more than two eggs at a time, and sit from 

 fourteen to seventeen days, and in general one is a male, the other 

 a female.* 



Independent of their being esteemed for the table, they are valued 

 on other accounts; their dung is thought to be a most excellent 

 manure for some kinds of land ;f has been used as one article in 

 tanning the upper leathers of shoes ;$ and by some applied as a 

 cataplasm ; indeed salt petre was formerly collected from it. The 

 greatest use of the Pigeon is at Ispahan, in Persia, where it is said 

 there are about 3000 Pigeon-houses kept by the Turks alone; Chris- 

 tians not being allowed to keep any.§ 



Tavernier says, that their dung is used to smoke melons. Pigeons 

 are fond of salt, and are found to be injurious to walls and tiling, by 

 picking out the mortar, especially when old, as it contains much 

 saline matter; hence the usual way to entice Pigeons to remain 

 where intended, or to decoy them from other places, is by means of 

 a salt cat, which is a mixture composed of loam, old rubbish, and 

 salt, but this mode is not only unneighbourly, but we believe illegal. 



* Trifling as this number may appear, yet supposing we allow them to breed nine times 

 in a year, the produce from a single pair at the end of four years may amount to 14,762. — 

 AmcBii. Acad. ii. 32. Stillin. Tracts, 75. Linnaeus makes the number to more than 18,000! 



•f Plat. — A load of coals has been exchanged for a load of Pigeon's dung, and fetched 

 sixteen miles. Pigeon's dung used in Scotland at this day by Sir Alexander Dick, Bart. 

 He mixes it layer upon layer, with chaff, turning it before it is laid on the land. See Crit. 

 Review, December 1784. p. 441. forty or fifty bushels allowed to an acre. — Bath Papers. 

 p. 152. * Phil- Trans. 1778. p. 114. 



§ Pococke and others mention the frequency of Pigeon-houses in Egypt, adding, that 

 these are reckoned a great part of the estate of an husbandman, and the common proverb, 

 in those parts is, that a man who has a Pigeon-house, needs not be careful about the dis- 

 posal of his daughter. — Trav^ i. 210. pi. 8. Pigeons are more numerous in Egypt than in 

 any country on earth. Every hamlet and town forms a vast Pigeon-house. — Savory, Letters 

 on Egypt, No. 3. 



