Peculiar Tastes Eccentricities of feeding habit are many among creatures
of instinct as well as of reason ; but one of the oddest I ever heard of is reported from France by a reader of The Spectator. A tame white pigeon showed such a passion for cigarette ash that it would come and wait for people to begin smoking and pounce with avidity on the first piece of ash flicked off the cigarette. A number of trials of the bird were made. Food and ash were thrown down together, but the pigeon invariably ate the ash before it began on the proper food. Tobacco and ash were put down together, but the bird had no use for tobacco till it was burnt. Like some plants, the bird perhaps needed potash ! A long account reached me some while ago— and it was the third of similar occurrences—of a rook that had a mania for pecking out the mortar that held window- panes ; but the mania was purely matutinal. It was only indulged during the small hours of the morning. A Cairn terrier belonging to a neighbour has a curious fondness for aubretia. It grazes on both leaf and flowers with the same zeal that a spaniel of mine used to show for goose grass. Both plants perhaps have a medicinal value. A distressing taste exhibited in my garden at the moment is the fondness of a particular young rabbit for the tips of larkspurs coming into flower.
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