PIGEONS 
Columbifonnes 
The pigeons as a group are extremely well defined. In 
the words of Og-ilvie-Grant, formerly in charge of the 
drpartment of birds at the British Museum of Natural History, 
■'the birds of this order possess so characteristic a physiognomy 
that they may be easily recognised at the first glance" and 
indeed their short rather feeble beaks with the naked swollen 
skin at the Wse and the well-known contonr of their bodies 
render it unnecessary for us to write more of their physical 
characteristics. 
Anatomically they arc closely related to the game-birds 
and also to the sand-grouse. 
Young pigeons, which when just hatched arc blind and 
naked although they rapidly develop a coat of long thin down, 
are fed by their parents with a flnid secreted in the crop. 
*' Pigeon's milk'^ is therefore not entirely fabulous. 
The nest is a very poor affair, often amounting to little 
more than a rough platform of twigs always containing pure 
^vhite eggs, usually two in immber. 
The extinct Dodo and the Solitaire were large pigeons 
wluch had lost the power of flight, a circumstance no doubt 
due to the fact that they lived on the small islands of Mauritius 
and Rodriguez where food was plentiful and enemies scarce 
and the necessity for flying much reduced. 
Several hundreds of species arc known and they are found 
all over the world. They are particularly abundant in the 
East and in Australia and many species are esteemed as food. 
In Malaya more than twenty different kinds of pigeon are 
found. This includes a number not known from Singapore. 
Such are the ground-loving Nicobar pigeon, a metalhc-green 
bird with long hackles on its neck, which does not live on the 
mainlatid but prefers the small islands near the coast; a bulky 
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