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These of all fowls, live most sociably in a Common-wealth together, seeing their government is not, as Bees, Monarchical. They are generally reported without gall, understand it, their gall is not sequestred into a distinct vessel, as in other creatures. Otherwise we find the effects thereof in their animosities among themselves, (whose Bills can peck as well as kiss) as also (if their Crops be not clearly drawn,) in the bit∣terness of their flesh. They are most swift in flight, and the steerage of their Tails conduceth much to their steddy mounting upright. An envious man, having caught his neighbours Pigeons in a Net, feeding on his Stack, pluck'd off their Tails and let them go. Which, though they could fly forward home, yet were soon after found dead in the Dove coat, famished for want of food, as unable to fly up perpendicularly, and so out at the Lover.
Pigeons, against their wills, keep one Lent for seaven weeks in the year, betwixt the going out of the old, and growing up of the new grain. Probably, our English would be found as docible and ingenious, as the Turkish Pigeons, which carry letters from Aleppo to Babilon, if trained up accordingly. But such practices, by these Wing∣posts, would spoil many a Foot-post, living honestly by that painful vocation.
I find a grievous Indictment drawn up against the poor Pigeons for felony, as the grand plunderers of grain in this Land. My * 1.1 Author computing six and twenty thousand Dove-houses in England and Wales, and allowing five hundred pair in each House, four bushels yearly for each pair, hath mounted the annual wast they make to an incredible sum. And, if the moity of his proportions hold true, Doves may be accounted the causers of dearth, and justly answer their Etimology in Hebrew Jonah, which is deduced from a root, signifying to spoil or to destroy. The Advocates for Pigeons plead, that they pick up such loose corn, which otherwise would be lost, and uselesly troden into the earth; that probably Divine Providence, which feedeth the fowls, by some natural instinct directeth them to such grain, which would be barren and fruitless, that their dung, incredibly fruitful for the manuring of ground, abun∣dantly recompenseth the spoil done by them.
However, if Pigeons be guilty of so great stealth, they satisfie the law for the same, being generally kill'd for mans meat, and a corrected-pigeon (let blood under both wings) is both pleasant and wholesome nourishment.