
27 
the fitness of a waterless place like Port Royal, for 
pigeon feeding. But a careful attention to the 
supply of fresh fluid, will be always an attraction 
homeward, in their farthest wanderings. Jivery 
body has observed, at least we think so, if they have 
been observers at all, that pigeons drink as no other 
birds drink. ‘They plunge their heads into the fluid, 
nearly up to the eyes, and gulp it down by full 
draughts, not by sipslike cocks and hens. They do 
not raise the head while quaffing, but draw in the 
water as cattledo at ahorse pond. Under ordinary 
circumstances they pertinaciously stick to their old 
abode, and under an economy that supplies them 
with fresh water, where fresh water is not otherwise 
to be got they would prove the most patient of home- 
lovers, magnifying its comforts by the multitudinous 
privations they suffer away from its sweet small lux- 
uries. It should not, however, be forgotten, that 
there are care and caution to be attended to, in se- 
lecting a location for acolony in which the life must 
partake more of the wild incidents than are actually 
the lot of the domesticated tenants of the dove-cot. 
Lhe following passage from Varro, which Mr Dixon, 
gives and translates in his text, should never be lost 
sight of. “If ever you should establish a dovery, 
you should consider the birds your own although 
they were wild. For two sorts of pigeons are 
usually kept in a dovery ; the one belonging to rural 
districts, and as others call it a rock-pigeon, which 
i kept in towers, and among the beams and rafters 
(columinibus) of a farm-house, and which is, on that 
‘account, named columba, since, from natural timidity, 

