Chap. VI. 



THEIR REVERSION IN COLOUR. 



209 



I crossed a male dun Dragon belonging to a family which 

 had been dun-coloured without wing-bars during several 

 generations, with a uniform red Barb (bred from two black 

 Barbs) ; and the offspring presented decided but faint traces 

 of wing-bars. I crossed a uniform red male Runt with a 

 White trumpeter ; and the offspring had a slaty-blue tail with 

 a bar at the end, and with the outer feathers edged with 

 white. I also crossed a female black and white chequered 

 Trumpeter (of a different strain from the last) with a male 

 Almond-tumbler, neither of which exhibited a trace of blue, 

 or of the white croup, or of the bar at end of tail : nor is it 

 probable that the progenitors of these two birds had for 

 many generations exhibited any of these characters, for I 

 have never even heard of a blue Trumpeter in this country, 

 and my Almond-tumbler was purely bred ; yet the tail of this 

 mongrel was bluish, with a broad black bar at the end, and 

 the croup was perfectly white. It may be observed in several 

 of these cases, that the tail first shows a tendency to become 

 by reversion blue ; and this fact of the persistency of colour in 

 the tail and tail-coverts 29 will surprise no one who has attended 

 to the crossing of pigeons. 



The last case which I will give is the most curious. I 

 paired a mongrel female Barb-fan tail with a mongrel male 

 Barb-spot; neither of which mongrels had the least blue 

 about them. Let it be remembered that blue Barbs are 

 excessively rare ; that Spots, as has been already stated, were 

 perfectly characterised in the year 1676, and breed perfectly 

 true ; this likewise is the case with white Fantails, so much 

 so that I have never heard of white Fantails throwing any 

 other colour. Nevertheless the offspring from the above two 

 mongrels was of exactly the same blue tint as that of the 

 wild rock-pigeon from the Shetland Islands over the whole 



29 I could give numerous examples ; 

 two will suffice. A mongrel, whose 

 four grandparents were a white Turbit, 

 white Trumpeter, white Fantail, and 

 blue Pouter, was white all over, 

 except a very few feathers about the 

 head and on the wings, but the whole 

 Sail and tail-coverts were dark bluish- 



grey. Another mongrel whose four 

 grandparents were a red Runt, white 

 Trumpeter, white Fantail, and the 

 same blue Pouter, was pure white tal 

 over, except the tail and upper aill- 

 coverts, which were pale fawn, and 

 except the faintest trace of double 

 wing-bars of the same pale fawn tint 



