young one
from the nest just before it is ready to fly. Crows are great thieves
and are attracted by bright objects. If you have a tame crow, and if
any member of your household misses jewellery or thimbles you had
better look in the crows' nest before you think that burglars have
been around.

The chief difference between tamed wild animals, such as squirrels,
birds, owls, foxes, crows and so on, and the domesticated animals and
birds, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, pigeons and chickens, lies in
the possibility with the latter of modifying nature and breeding for
certain special markings, colours or size. All breeds of chickens from
the little bantams to the enormous Brahmas have been bred from a wild
species of chicken found in India and called the jungle fowl.

All the great poultry shows held throughout the country annually are
for the purpose of exhibiting the most perfectly marked specimens of
the breeders' skill. This is decided by judges who award prizes. The
competition is sometimes very keen. In barred Plymouth Rock chickens,
for example, there are sometimes a hundred birds entered to compete
for a single prize. The breeders are called fanciers. The principal
breeders of certain animals such as rabbits, pigeons or poultry, form
an association or club and agree to an imaginary type of the animal
called the ideal or "Standard of Perfection."

For example, the breeders of white fantail pigeons agree that perfect
birds shall be of certain shape and size, with the head resting on the
back just at the base of the tail; the tail should be spread out like
a fan and contain at least twenty-eight feathers. These feathers
should be laced on the ends. The model fantail should have a nervous
jerky motion and never be at rest. Each of these points is given a
certain value on a scale of marking and in judging the birds they are
marked just as you may be in your lessons at school. The fancier tries
to breed a bird that comes the nearest to this model. The prizes are
sometimes of great value.

There is an enormous list of breeds in nearly all varieties of animals
and poultry. In pigeons alone there are carriers, pouters, tumblers,
baldheads, beards, dragoons, barbs, jacobins, Antwerps, turbits, owls,
orientals, damoscenes, capuchins, fantails, trumpeters, swifts,
Lahores, Burmese, Scandaroons, magpies, nuns, Archangels, runts and so
on.

These birds are very different in appearance, the pouter, for example,
has the