_Colombiers._--Certain _coutumes_ only give the right of _colombiers à pied_ (dovecots standing apart from a building) to the _Seigneurs Hauts Justiciers_; others grant it to all holders of fiefs. In Dauphiny, Brittany, and Normandy, no non-noble was allowed to possess dovecot, pigeon-house, or aviary; the nobles alone were allowed to keep pigeons. The penalties pronounced against those who killed the pigeons were extremely severe: the most afflictive punishments were sometimes bestowed. Such, according to the authors above cited, were the principal feudal rights still exercised and dues still levied in the second half of the eighteenth century. ‘The rights here mentioned,’ they add, ‘are those generally established at the present time. But there are still very many others, less known and less widely practised, which only occur in certain _coutumes_, or only in certain _seigneuries_, in virtue of peculiar titles.’ These rarer and more restricted feudal rights, of which our authors thus make mention, and which they enumerate, amount to the number of ninety-nine; and the greater part of them are directly prejudicial to agriculture, inasmuch as they give the _Seigneurs_ certain rights over the harvests, or tolls upon the sale or transport of grain, fruit, provisions, &c. Our authors say that most of these feudal rights were out of use in their day; I have reason to believe, however, that a great number of these dues were still levied, in some places, in 1789. After having studied, among the writers on feudal rights in the eighteenth century, the principal feudal rights still exercised, I was desirous of finding out what was their importance in the eyes of their contemporaries, at least as regarded the fortunes of those who levied them and those who had to pay them. Renauldon, one of the authors I have mentioned, gives us an insight into this matter, by laying before us the rules that legal men had to follow in their valuation of the different feudal rights which still existed in 1765, that is to say, twenty-four years before the Revolution. According to this law writer, the rules to be observed on these matters were as follow:-- _Droits de Justice._--‘Some of our _coutumes_,’ he says, ‘estimate the value of _justice haute_, _basse_, or _moyenne_ at a tenth of the revenues of the land. At that time the seignorial jurisdiction was considered of great importance. Edmé de Fréminville opines that, at the present day, the right of jurisdiction ought not to be valued at more than a twentieth of the revenues of the land; and I consider this valuation still too large.’ _Droits Honorifiques._--‘However inestimable these rights may be considered,’ declares our author, a man of a practical turn of mind, and not easily led away by appearances, ‘it would be prudent on the part of those who make valuations to fix them at a very moderate price.’