AN INSANE PIGEON.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." _I
&R,—It has amused and interested me very much to find from your article in the Spectator for August 30th, that some one besides myself has possessed an insane pigeon. My bird, whom
I had imagined to be the victim of delusions quite peculiar to himself, was a handsome white fantail, and, till he broke out in -the manner I am about to relate, the respected head of a large family. He was a very fine bird, with immense development of -chest and spread of tail, and giving himself all the airs befitting his position, nearly tipping over backwards with the dignity of his strut.
One day I found a ginger-beer bottle of the ordinary brown- stone description, lying on the carriage drive before the house. In a moment of exasperation at finding it left in such a place, I flung it through the open gates into the stable-yard. That instant down flew Paterfamilias from his house, in the gable -above the coach-house, and struting round and round the prostrate bottle, though never approaching it nearer than about nine inches, or a foot, he began to perform the most ludicrous series of genuflexions I ever witnessed on the part of an enamoured pigeon. He cooed and he bobbed, and he, in fact, made such a fool of himself, that though alarmed for his sanity, I was fairly doubled-up with laughter. This went on for about an hour, when I took away the bottle. But the same farce was acted again and again. During that summer it was the stock enter- tainment with which I regaled my visitors. No matter whether I threw down the bottle or gently placed it on the ground ; whether it stood up or was laid down; the moment it appeared .down he flew with more than the alacrity with which he was aecustomed to descend to his dinner, and went through all his performances over again, never stopping till the bottle was removed. His family watched his proceedings from the roof with calm contempt, never caring to take a nearer view of the object of his transports. During the next winter he died, so I was unable to discover bow long the delusion might have lasted. ,So far as I knew it was his only one, and but for this strange freak he appeared as sane a bird as you could find, and always conducted himself with grave propriety.
In those days I had never heard of Positivists, so I contented myself with asking Mr. Darwin kindly to explain the pigeon's antics, and when he expressed himself unable to do so with formulating a theory that my poor fantail was a new kind of monomaniac, inferring from his habits that other animals besides man may be the subjects of insane delusions.
Since then. Mr. Romanes has published my story in Nature, and (I believe) in his last work on Animal Intelligence. And the story has certainly a psychological interest. What could the -creature think the bottle was ? For anything less like a pigeon it is difficult to imagine. I may add that I tried him with many other things about the same size, but he took no notice of any of them. To the stony object of his affection be remained .constant. Titania's infatuation was curious enough, but to fall -desperately in love with a ginger-beer bottle appears to me an -eccentricity beating hers all to fits.—I am, Sir, &c., C. S.
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