THE WOOD PIGEON OR RING DOVE COLUMBA PALUMBUS
Head, cheeks, neck, and upper part of the tail, bluish grey; back and wing-coverts darker; a white crescent-shaped spot on each side of the neck surrounded by scale-like feathers with green and purple reflections; primaries grey towards the base, white in the middle, and dusky towards the extremity, with the outer web white; tail barred with black at the end; abdomen whitish; bill orange, powdered with white at the base; iris light yellow; feet blood-red; claws brown. Length sixteen and a half inches. Eggs pure white.
Two hundred and fifty years ago the taste for keeping different sorts of Pigeons was as strong as it is in the present day, and the popular names of Runts, Croppers, Shakers, Carriers, Jacobins, Turbits, Barbaries, Tumblers, Horsemen, Spots, etc., modern though they may sound, were then applied to the very same varieties which are described under these names in recent _Guides to the Poultry-yard_. Many of these were of foreign origin, and were known at a remote period in various eastern countries, so that there can be no doubt that the custom of keeping tame Pigeons is of very ancient date.
The Pigeons in some of their habits approach the gallinaceous birds, with which accordingly they are classed. They are furnished with long and powerful wings, by help of which they can sustain a rapid and continuous flight. They seek their food mostly on the ground, but do not scratch with their feet, and are more given to bathe in water than to flutter in a bath of dust, though in this habit also they not unfrequently indulge. They are furnished, moreover, with a large crop, in which the food supplied to their young is partially macerated and reduced to a kind of pulp before the latter are fed. This process is carried on more by the agency of the receiver than of the giver, as the young birds, instead of opening their mouths and allowing the food to be dropped in, help themselves by inserting their bills into the sides of the old bird's mouth. Their mode of drinking differs from that of the true gallinaceous birds; they do not take short sips, lifting the head after every draught, but satisfy their thirst by one continuous immersion of the whole bill. They build their nests of a few sticks, and lay two white eggs.