the turtle-dove (C. turtur), with the greater num- birds of the pigeon-kind, differs from all others. ber of the varieties, are cultivated only by a few The pigeon has the largest crop of any bird, for persons known as pigeon fanciers: but the com- its size; which is also quite peculiar to the kind. mon pigeon of different colors is cultivated for In two that were dissected by an eminent anathe table. The flesh of the young is very savory tomist it was found that, upon blowing the air and stimulating, and highly valued for pies; that into the windpipe, it distended the crop or gullet of the full aged pigeon is more substantial, to an enormous size. Pigeons live entirely upon harder of digestion, and heating. Black or dark grain and water; these, being mixed together in feathered pigeons are dark fleshed, and of high the crop, are digested in proportion as the bird flavor, inclining to the game bitter of the wild lays in its provisions. Young pigeons are very pigeon. Light colored feathers denote light and ravenous, which necessitates the old ones to h delicate flesh. The dung of pigeons is used for in a more plentiful supply than ordinary, and to tanning upper leathers for shoes; it is also an give it a sort of half maceration in the crop, ts excellent manure. It is so highly prized in make it fit for their tender stomachs. The noPersia that many pigeon-houses are erected at a merous glands, assisted by air and the heat of distance from habitations for the sole purpose of the bird's body, are the necessary apparatus for collecting this manure. They are large round secreting a sort of pap, or milky fluid (com towers, broader at the bottom than at the top, monly called pigeon's milk), but as the food maand crowned by 'conical spiracles through which cerates, it also swells, and the crop is considerthe pigeons descend. Their interior resembles ably dilated. If the crop were filled with solid a honeycomb, forming thousands of holes for substances, the bird could not contract it; but it nests; and the outsides are painted and orna- is obvious the bird has the power to compress mented. The dung is applied almost entirely to its crop at pleasure, and, by discharging the air, the rearing of melons, a fruit most rapidly raised can drive the food out also, which is forced up in scarce seasons; and hence the reason that the gullet with great ease. The young usuniy during the famine of Samaria a cab of dove's receives this tribute of affection from the crop dung was sold for five pieces of silver. (2 Kings three times a day. The male for the most part vi. 25). The Persians do not eat the bird. Pi- feeds the young female, and the old female pergeons are now much less cultivated than formerly, forms the same service for the young malebeing found injurious to corn fields, and espe- While the young are weak, the old ones supply cipally to fields of peas. They are, however, them with food macerated suitably to their tenvery ornamental; a few may be kept by most der frame; but, as they gain strength, the parents farmers, and fed with the common poultry, and give it less preparation, and at last drive them some who breed domestic fowls on a large scale out, when a craving appetite obliges them to may, perhaps, find it worth while to add the shift for themselves; for, when pigeons have pigeon to their number. The gray pigeon is plenty of food, they do not wait for the total most suitable for the common pigeon-house; it dismission of their young; it being a common generally shows fruitfulness by the redness of thing to see young ones fledged, and eggs hatching the eyes and feet, and by the ring of gold color at the same time and in the same nest. Pigeons which is about the neck. are granivorous, and very delicate and cleanly in their diet; they will sometimes eat green aromatic vegetables, but are fondest of seeds; and tares, and the smallest kind of horse-beans, are the most suitable food both in point of economy and fattening qualities.

Stocking of pigeon-houses is best performed in May or August, as the birds are then in the best condition. Young birds called squeakers should be chosen, as the old are apt to fly away. The pigeon lays in breeding two white eggs, which produce young ones of different sexes. When the eggs are laid, the female sits fifteen days, not including the three days she is employed in laying, and is relieved at intervals by the male. The turns are generally pretty regular. The female usually sits from about five in the evening till nine the next morning; at which time the male supplies her place, while she is seeking refreshment abroad. Thus they sit alternately till the young are hatched. If the female does not return at the expected time, the male seeks her, and drives her to the nest; and, should he in his turn be neglectful, she retaliates with equal severity. When the young ones are hatched, they only require warmth for the first three days; a task which the female takes entirely upon herself, and never leaves them except for a few minutes to take a little food. After this they are fed about ten days with what the old ones have picked up in the fields, and kept treasured in their crops, whence they satisfy the craving appetite of their young ones, who receive it very greedily. This way of supplying the young with food from the crop, in

Pease, wheat, buck-wheat, and even barley oats, &c., are also eaten by pigeons, but old tares may be reckoned their best food, says Mr. Loudon; new tares, pease, or beans, are reckoned scouring. Wherever pigeons are kept, the best way to keep them chiefly at home, and thereby both prevent their being lost and their doing injury to corn-crops, is to feed them well; the is also the only way in which, in modern times, they will afford abundance of fat and delicate squabs for the table, which, well fed, they will do every month in the year, and thus afford a constant supply of delicate stimulating food. Pigeons are generally fed in the open air adjoining their cote or house; but in inclement weather, or to attach new pigeons to their home, both food and water should be given alternately. That this may be done without waste, and without frequently disturbing the birds, two contrivances are in use; the first is the meat-box or hopper, whence grain or pulse descends from the hopper as eaten out of a small shallow box; the next is the water-bottle, an ovate, long, naked bottle, reversed in a small basin to which

it serves as a reservoir. Any bottle will do, but the pigeons are apt to alight on and dirty such as when reversed present a flat top. Pigeons being fond of salt, what is called a pigeon-cat is often placed in the midst of the pigeon-house, or in the open air near it. It seems these birds are fond of salt and hot substances, and constantly swallow small stones to promote digestion. The salt-cat is thus composed gravel or drift-sand, unctuous loam, the rubbish of an old wall, or lime, a gallon of each; should lime be substituted for rubbish, a less quantity of the former will suffice; one pound of cummin-seed, one handful of bay-salt; mix with stale urine. Enclose this in jars, corked or stopped, holes being punched in the sides, to admit the beaks of the pigeons. These may be placed abroad. They are very fond of this mixture, and it prevents them from pecking the mortar from the roofs of their houses, which they are otherwise very apt to do. Cleanliness is one of the first and most important considerations in a dove

cote.

Pigeons are protected by the legislature. By the 1 James, c. 27, whosoever shall shoot at, kill, or destroy, any dove or pigeon, with any gun or bow, or take, kill, or destroy the same with setting dogs or nets, or any snares, engines, or instruments whatsoever, shall, on being convicted before two justices, by confession, or oath of two witnesses, be commited to gaol for three months, or pay for the use of the poor 20s. for every pigeon; or, after this commitment become bound by recognizance, with two sureties, before two justices, in £20 each, not to offend in like manner again. And by the 2 Geo. III. c. 29, any person who shall shoot at, or by any means kill or take, with a wilful intent to destroy, any pigeon, he shall on conviction thereof, by confession, or oath of one witness, before one justice, forfeit 20s. to the prosecutor; and, if not immediately paid, such justice shall commit him to the house of correction, for any term not exceeding three months, nor less than one, unless the penalty be sooner paid. Persons who are convicted on this act shall not be convicted by any former act, and prosecutions on this act must be commenced within two months after the offence was committed. These two abstracts are given to inform the keepers of pigeons of the laws in force to protect them; but more especially to remove the vulgar error,so prevalent among the lower class of people, that pigeons are a nuisance, that they destroy a great deal of seed in the fields, grain in the rick-yards, and loosen the tiles on the tops of buildings; and that any person may shoot them, provided that he does not carry them away.

They are of three kinds, small boarded cases fixed on posts, trees, or against the ends of houses: lofts fitted up with holes or nests; and detached buildings. The first are generally too small to contain a sufficient brood, and are also too subject to variations of temperature; and the last, on the other hand, are now-a-days too large, and therefore the most suitable for the farmer is a loft or tower rising from a building in which no noisy operation is carried on. The lofts of any of the farm-buildings at a distance from the threshing-machine are suitable, or a loft or tower over any detached building will answer PIGEON (Peter Charles Francis), curate and well; but the best situation of all is a tower afterwards rector or vicar of Bayeux, one of the raised from the range of poultry-buildings, numberless victims who fell a sacrifice to Jacowhere there is such a range, as the pigeons can bin rage and infidelity, in the beginning of the thus be more conveniently treated, and will feed French revolution. Although a man of not only very readily with domestic poultry. For a tower sincere piety, but of uncommon mildness and of this sort, the round form should be preferred humanity, yet, because he refused to take the to the square; because the rats cannot so easily oaths imposed by the republicans, he and his come at them in the former as in the latter. It family were at first insulted and persecuted in is also much more commodious; as, by means the cruellest manner, and he himself was at last of a ladder turning round upon an axis, it murdered on the 20th of August, 1793, in his is possible to visit all the nests in the house, thirty-eighth year. without the least difficulty; which cannot be so easily done in a house of the square form. And

in order to hinder rats from climbing up the outside of it, the wall should be covered with tinplates to a certain height, as about a foot and a half; which should project out three or four inches at the top, to prevent more effectually their getting up. A common mode in France is to raise a boarded room on a strong post, powerfully braced, the interior sides of which are lined with boxes for the birds, and the exterior east and west sides with balconies, or sills for them to alight on and enter to their boxes. The north and south sides are lined with boxes inside, but without openings, as being too cold on the one front, and too warm on the other. The interior must be lined with nests or holes, subdivided either by stone, as in the ancient mural pigeon-houses; by boards; or each nest composed of a vase or vessel of earthenware fixed on its side. Horizontal shelves divided vertically at three feet distance, are generally esteemed preferable to every other mode.

PIGEON PEA. See CYTISUS.

PIGEON FOOT is a species of geranium.

PIGHIUS (Stephen Vinand), a learned antiquary, born at Campen in Overyssel, in 1520. He went to Rome, and was patronised by cardinal Granvelle, who made him his librarian. The learned are indebted to him for the first good edition of Valerius Maximus, in 1585, 8vo. He became preceptor to prince Charles of Juliers, who dying, he wrote a panegyric upon him, on which his father, prince William, made him canon of Santen, where he died in 1604, aged eighty-four. His Annales, seu Fasti Romanorum Magistratuum et Provinciarum, were published by Schottus in 1615, in 3 vols. folio.

PIGHT, old preter, and part. pass. of pitch. See PITCH.

PIGMENT, n. s. Lat. pigmentum. Paint; color to be laid on any body.

Consider about the opacity of the corpuscles of black pigments, and the comparative diaphaneity of Boyle.

white bodies.