FANCIERS JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
= 
LEHIGH VALLEY POULTRY ASSOCIATION. 
Epiror Fanciers’ JouRNAL. 
Dear Sir: I inclose you clipping from our local paper, 
with full list of officers, &c., &. I take great pleasure in 
assuring you that our Association, under the able manage- 
ment of the very efficient officers, bids fair to prosper, and 
accomplisifits mission. It will supply fully a want long felt 
in this locality. Any further information you may desire 
for your valuable Journal will be cheerfully forwarded. 
Hoping to see our enterprise encouraged through your 
columns, I remain respectfully yours, 
C. G. TREXLER. 
ALLENTOWN, June 2, 1874. 

FRIEND WaApDzE: 
I have lost three or four fine Canaries lately, and desire to 
ask through the Journal, if any one can tell me what ailed 
them, and suggest a remedy. 
The birds were apparently well in the morning, but towards 
noon (or some time during the day), they commenced moping. 
The feathers were roughed up as in a case of cold. I treated 
them for cold, giving bread and milk (boiled), in which I 
put a little pepper pod and a little rhubarb. I also gavea 
little maw seed. They did not get any better and I examined 
them closely. The eyes were dull and heavy; the body was 
very poor and thin; the breast bone nearly protruding 
through the skin; the rump gland was slightly inflamed, 
but not niuch. I then gave some hard-boiled egg and hemp 
seed, but they continued to droop, and died the next day. 
I had been feeding them on the best canary and summer rape 
seed, and I cannot think that they suffered from want of 
attention. Has any one had a like experience? ia Et: 















Be. Le = aE 
Pigeon Department. 
MOORE’S WORK ON PIGEONS. 
(Continued from page 361.) 
a ‘tolerable judgment whether a pigeon be cock or hen, for 
im this point the best and oldest fanciers have been some- 
times deceived; for this purpose, therefore, take the follow- 
ing rules: 
The hen has generally a shorter breastbone than the cock. 
Her vent, and the os sacrum, or bone near the vent, is 
more open than in the cock. : 
Her head and cheeks are thinner, and she does not look 
so bold as the cock. 
Her coo is shorter, and nothing near so loud and masculine 
as the cock’s; besides, the cock frequently makes a half- 
round in his playing, which the hen does not, though a 
merry rank hen will sometimes show and play almost like 
a cock, and, if very salacious, will sometimes tread another 
pigeon. 
And lastly, in young pigeons, that which squeaks longest 
_in the nest is generally reputed a hen, 


377 

THE GENERATION OF PIGEONS. 
We now come to treat of the generation of this bird, that 
is, the method it makes use of for propagation of its species; 
and here I must acknowledge myself obliged to Dr. Harvey 
in his excellent treatise of the generation of animals. 
All animals therefore are distinguished into three sorts: 
oviparous, or such as are formed from an egg; viviparous, 
or such as are produced from the uterus alive and in perfec- 
tion ; and vermiparous, or such as are formed from a worm. 
Though in fact the fetus of all kinds of animals is pro- 
duced from an egg; the only reason therefore of this distine- 
tion is, that in some animals this egg (if I may be allowed 
the phrase), is hatched, or brought to perfection in the 
uterus ; whereas all of the feathered kind emit or lay this 
egg, and produce their young from it by incubation. 
The pigeon, therefore, is an oviparous bird. I call it a 
bird because all that belong to this genus feed their young 
ones for some considerable time after they are hatched ; 
whereas the young ones of the fowl kind will search for 
their own food, and eat it themselves almost as soon as they 
are discharged from the shell of that egg in which they were 
produced. 
It will not here be amiss to give some account of the 
production of the egg. Nature produces in the ovary, or 
upper matrix of the hen or female bird, a great cluster of 
small yolks, sticking together like a bunch of grapes, which 
from this similitude Dr. Harvey calls a vitellary, and adds 
that in pigeons he has observed this cluster of eggs to be all 
of a like magnitude, excepting only two which were larger 
than the rest, and were now ready to descend into the lower 
uterus or womb. 
The cock in the act of coition impregnates these eggs, and 
by a wonderful operation of nature renders them prolific. 
We shall not take upon us here to determine the method by 
which this is performed, but shall content ourselves with 
observing that there is a spot at each end of the egg, called 
by the learned, chalazz, from the resemblance of a small 
hailstone, and, vulgarly, the cock’s treadles; these, by a 
mistake, have heen accounted to proceed from the emission 
of the male, and to contain the plastic virtue of the foetus, 
but experience has abundantly proved that these treadles 
are to be found in all eggs, whether they are prolific and 
fruitful or subventaneous and addle. 
It is the opinion of most, and that not without great 
probability, that all the eggs a hen will ever lay are con- 
tained in this vitellary or cluster, and that as soon as this 
number is exhausted she will become effete or barren. 
Some people therefore to abuse mankind, and vend a useless 
bird, will oil the vent of a barren hen and force an egg into 
it, to make you believe she is not effete; if you happen to 
be thus imposed on, that you may not lose your seasons of 
breeding, by keeping such a hen matched to a good cock, 
we shall give a method to prove whether she be effete or 
not. When the cock drives her hard-to nest, give her a 
pair of eggs, and let her hatch them and bring up; pursue 
this method for two or three pair, if you value her, and if 
she be not barren this, and cross-matching her, that is, pair- 
ing her to another cock, will effectually bring her to laying. 
Before we leave this head, we cannot omit mentioning 
the dalliances made use of by this bird before coition, which 
are in a manner endearing and peculiar only tothem. And 
here the cock when salacious will, by a voice at that time 
peculiarly harmonious, and by several pretty, and as we may 
( To be continued.) 
