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 grain, by the side of the mouth, which occasions inflammation and swelling of the basal margins of the mandibles. When a boy, I had a young Rock Dove, which I fed for some time in this manner, until the bill became tumid and sore, when, in consequence of advice from a friend, I took a mouthful of barley and water, and introduced the pigeon's bill, when the bird soon satisfied itself, flapping its wings gently and uttering a low cry all the while. It grew up vigorously, shed the yellow down-tips of its feathers, and began to fly about, Towards the middle of autumn it renewed its plumage, and assumed the bright and beautiful tints of the adult male. Whenever I escaped from the detested pages of Virgil and Horace, the pigeon was sure to fly to me, and sometimes alighted on my head or shoulder, directing its bill towards my mouth, and flapping its wings. Nor did it ever fly off with the wild pigeons, which almost every day fed near the house, although it had no companions of its own species. At length some fatal whim induced it to make an excursion to a village about a mile distant, when it alighted on the roof of a hut, and the boys pelted it dead with stones. Long and true was my sorrow for my lost companion, the remembrance of which will probably continue as long as life. I have since mourned the loss of a far dearer dove. They were gentle and lovely beings; but while the one has been blended with the elements, the other remains 'hid with Christ in God,' and for it I 'mourn not as those who have no hope.'

"The young, which at first are covered with loose yellow down, are when fledged of the game colour as the old birds, the head and neck, however, being of a dull purplish-blue, without the bright green aud purple tints of the old, and the wings tinged with brown. At the first moult, they acquire their full colouring, only that a little brown remains on the edge of the wings.

"They are easily tamed when taken young; yet it is said that when not particularly attended to, and supplied with abundance of food, they are more apt to fly away and join the flocks of their own species, than the common tame pigeon. They are seen in large flocks in the winter and spring months, when they frequent barn-yards much for food, especially when the ground is covered with snow. I have also seen them in large groups in the harvest-time, when that happened late im the year.

"The crops of three obtained from Shetland were examined and found to be completely filled, up to the throat; that of the first with a mixture of barley and oats of the same species as mentioned above, namely, bear and the small oat, with a considerable number of what appeared to be eggs of snails or Helices, being globular, dusky, a twelfth of an inch in diameter, their envelope membranous, and their contents a whitish fluid of the consistency of pus; along with these substances were fragments of pods of Raphanus Raphanistrum. The crop of the second was crammed with oats, among which were a few seeds, apparently of polygona, and fragments of charlock pods. That of the third contained oat-seeds exclusively. In the gizzards were numerous fragments of quartz, gonerally white, but some tinged with chlorite, and a few of felspar and either gneiss or granite.