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Show According to the Times of Glasgow, Kentucky, there has been near that place the past month (March) a robins'-roost that equals the pigeon-roost of olden times. A cedar thicket of about sixty acres furnishes the birds a lodging place. About sundown every evening constant streams from every direction pour into the grove, and almost obscure the heavens in their flight. Night finds almost every bush in the thicket bending with its red-breasted load. For the past weeks lovers of sport for miles around have been visiting the place, and every night the thicket is illuminated with the torches of men, with clubs and sacks, gathering the feathery harvest. Mr. Smith has killed over two thousand, and hundreds are carried away every night but they don't seem to decrease. There are millions of them. Large quantities of them have been sold in town. "They are very fat, and make, when well cooked, a dish good enough for anybody." Seeing that the robin is one of the most efficient destroyers of insect pests - a young robin requiring daily a bulk of such food equal to its own weight - it is probable that every bird killed at the "roost" will cost the county a dollar, perhaps ten times as much. In any case, one of these birds "in the bush" is worth a score or more "in the hand" or in the frying pan. Sacred Pigeons. - People who will sentimentalize over the pigeons of St. Mark's may like to know that they have been settled in the city of Venice ever since 877. After the religious services of Palm Sunday it was anciently the custom of the sacristans of St. Mark's to release doves fettered with fragments of paper, and thus partly disabled from flight, for the people to scramble for in the piazza. The people fattened such of the birds as they caught and ate them at Easter, but those pigeons which escaped took refuge in the roof of the church, where they assumed a certain sacredness of character, and increased to enormous numbers. They were fed by provision of the Republic, and, being neglected at the time of its fall, many of them starved. But they now flourish on a bequest left by a pious lady for their maintenance, and on the largess of grain and polenta constantly bestowed by strangers. They have at last found a way to prevent seasickness. Any passenger who is sick will be charged double fare. - Boston Post. |