Show r The Largest Pigeon Coop in the Country I haye the largest and most com plete collection of highbread pigeons pi-geons in the United States and am willing to challenge any fancier in this country or anywhere in the world when it comes to that to show a better collection than that contained in my coop said Dr Bunting Hankins of Bordentown N J yesterday The doctor has devoted many years and spent a fortune in breeding thoroughbred birds many of which have been imported by him from the farthest ends of the earth In the center of the beautiful lawn in rear of the doctors residence on Farnsworth avenue Bordentown is a nicelyarranged wire loft or coop seventy feet in length twenty five feet in height and about thirty feet in width Here are quartered the doctors pets as he seems pleased to call them There are over iou birds at preset valued at about 4000 Anong them are a numher of prize winneis A noted breeder from Germany lately visited the coop and whiln being shown the birds an across one which stuck his fancy so that he declared I must take off my hat to that bird and forthwith bared his head The bird in question Dr Hankins declares is the finest owl in America I have been so successful suc-cessful in crossing and recrosslng my stock in the past explained the doctor that I feel warranted iu saying that after a while J mean to set the pigeon fanciers just as erazy over my stock as horsemen I Ere over Vanderbilts celebrated team There is one thing especially noticeable in mat ing pigeons he continued and it would be well perhaps it some members of the human family would profit by the example It is this After a pair hnve been mated one never leaves the other until death intervenes My favorites are the carrier pigeons That one over there said the doctor pointing to a beautitul speckled Antwerp is Sultana who once flew from Auck to tirusself a distanc3 of 500 miles with 2251 other birds and was the fiftytif bird in the order of time that made the passage That littie homer over there Alexandria is from the first familijs of Virginia Its mother was one of the ten trained by the Old Domin ion club of Alexandria There is a strange circumstance connected with the hatching of this bird The mother was brought on from Alexandria Alex-andria my coop on June 28 1882 On that day she laid an egg in one of the cages The day following she was freed and flew back to Alexandria a distance of 133 mile in 104 minutes nearly a mile a minute min-ute The egg was given to a pall of ueeliug owls who hatched the little bird Every carrier in my coop has a record of from 340 to 530 miles Thej ouly fly from sunrise to sunsetBismarck Tribune |