FANCY PIGEONS. 
319 
FANCY PIGEONS. 
It is a mistake to suppose, as many do, that the Pigeon fancy is 
a modern taste. There are many passages in the chissics which 
serve to show that dilFerent varieties of these birds were cultivated 
in very ancient times, and that the choicest of them fetched ex- 
tremely high prices. Thus Columella is scandalised at the inve- 
teracy and extravagance of the Pigeon fancy among his countrymen ; 
and M. Varro records it as the shame of his age that persons should 
be found to purchase a couple of these birds at the price of about 
S2L What would he have said to 60^. for a pair of the large Blue- 
crowned Indian Pigeons, and lOOZ. for a pair of Impeyan Pigeons? 
or, worse still, 400^., which Yarrell says is the market price of a 
really fine Tiger ? 
Pliny speaks thus of the Pigeon mania among the Romans: — 
* And many are mad with the love of these birds ; they build towers 
for them on the tops of their roofs, and will relate the high breeding 
and ancestry of each after the Eastern fashion.' 
So it seems that the custom of tracing back the pedigree of a 
choice pigeon, as an Arab does of his barb, was ancient in the time 
when Pliny wrote ; and, indeed, all through the records of history, 
whether sacred or profane, and the myths and traditions with which 
much of it is obscured, we catch here and there a glimpse of the 
beautiful bird — now winnowing with white wings the thick mist and 
gloom which enveloped a submerged world ; now fluttering in the 
hands of the .priest, ready to be olfered on the altar of daily sacrifice ; 
now descending, like a gleam of light from heaven, an emblem of 
the all-pervading Spirit of Love and Holiness, to rest upon Him, of 
whose greater sacrifice all the Mosaic offerings were but types and 
foreshadowings ; now amid the lurid smoke and fiery rain of belea- 
guered cities, and of blood-stained battle-fields ; now in the sacred 
groves, and about the altars' of heathen deities ; in many instances 
considered a sacred and oracular bird. Everywhere do we see the 
Dove or Pigeon — for the terms are identical ; cooing on the shoulder 
of Mahomet, and, as his followers say, communicating past, present, 
and coming events to the false prophet; probably this idea was 
taken from our Scriptures, in which the Dove figures as emblematical 
of the Holy Spirit, on which account a sage or holy man was some- 
times represented with this bird whispering in his ear, words, we are 
to suppose, of Divine wisdom and foreknowledge ; drawing the 
chariot of Venus, the goddess of beauty and of love ; bearing vows 
of fidelity and expressions of passionate attachment from one de- 
voted heart to another ; sometimes, however, sterner messages, and 
news of disastrous defeat, or other great evil fallen upon an indi- 
vidual, a family, or a nation. 
