In our days the eggs and young are said to make good eating, but the birds are kept usually for their beauty alone, though their splendid tails are used at times as an ornament.
THE DOVE-LIKE PIGEON
Is there not something very soft and tender in the word dove and in the loving ways of this fine bird? When we speak of the Turtle-dove there rises in our mind an image of tenderness and love which never comes to us when the Pigeon is named. Yet these two are the same. Pigeon and dove are two names for one family of birds.
Long ago the species known as the rock-pigeon was tamed, and this is the one that lives with us in such numbers as one of our chief home birds. The place we keep him in is often called the dove-cot, and in this way the two names are still kept together. The wild rock-pigeon, the ancestor of our tame pigeon, is also known as the ring-dove, so that the term dove-cot fits very well.
The pigeon is our one bird of the air. The other tenants of the poultry yard have long given up the art of flying, except for a very short distance, but the pigeon is a great flyer still and spends much of its time on the wing. It is indeed one of the fastest of flyers and thinks little of a journey of a hundred miles through the air. But it never forgets its home and if taken away will wing its way straight back again.
The pigeon has been a companion of man for ages past. It is spoken of in the annals of Egypt at a date five thousand years ago and has been at home in city and village ever since. With its wonderful power of flight it seems strange that it does not leave us never to return, but as it has nothing to escape from and much to come back to, the pigeon can be trusted with the fullest liberty.
It is, in truth, a trusty bird, gentle and lively in nature, fond of society and faithful to its own. It loves its home, and tenderly caresses its mate, with a graceful show of affection. Under its name of the dove it has long been held as the emblem of peace and innocence, and the phrase "billing and cooing," so often applied to lovers, is taken from its love-making methods.
In the old countries of Asia the pigeon was held to be a sacred bird. In Greece it was the bird of Venus and was kept in great flocks around the temples of this goddess. From Greece it spread to Rome and thence to all Europe, and in time became the Christian symbol of immortal life, the white dove being looked upon as the bearer of souls to heaven. This idea still survives and less than two weeks ago I saw a beautiful white pigeon set free over a grave and fly upward as one on a heavenly errand.