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COLUMBIDiE. 
hard frost, it descends to shingly beaches, where it picks up 
small seeds among the withered plants above high-water mark. 
Messrs Baikie and Heddle, writing of this species, observe — 
“ They often fly in large flocks, and are very destructive to 
corn fields/’ In my own copy of the work from which this 
statement is extracted, a native of Shetland, who happens to 
be rather fond of the Eock Pigeon, has pencilled the following 
words against the passage : — ‘‘ Nonsense. The Pigeon only 
picks up the stray grain left exposed to other birds. It does 
vastly more good than harm.” Without wishing to create a 
prejudice against the birds, but merely with a desire to ascer- 
tain the truth, I shot some of them in the very act of picking 
the grain from the sheaves in the fields, but ''they were of course 
only sunning themselves.” I shot them in the same act in 
rainy weather, but "the poor birds were only resting upon 
the sheaves in preference to the damp ground.” As a still 
further proof, after they had been engaged fully a quarter of 
an hour upon the sheaves, I shot them with the grain in their 
very bills, and was again discomfited with the remark that 
I " might at any rate have given them time to swallow what 
they had picked up on the ground.” On the other hand, it is 
equally difficult to convince farmers that it at least does some 
little good. But in this case, as in all other similar cases, 
the wisest course is merely to give a simple unprejudiced 
record of facts, leaving truth to work its own way, as it 
inevitably will in the end. To state that any living thing is 
probably useful to mankind, is but to divide one’s hearers into 
two classes, the one clamouring for its extermination, the 
other prepared to protect it to an injurious extent; and a 
precisely similar result would have been sure to follow an 
opinion that it was useless or hurtful. When its enemies see 
it upon the sheaves, they at once begin to argue as if this 
were its constant habit all the year round, and they enter 
into the most intricate calculations as to the probable number 
of bushels thus consumed during the twelve months. Simi- . 
larly, its would-be friends are triumphant when, on opening 
