210 DOMESTIC PIGEONS : Chap. VI. 



back and wings; the double black wing-bars were equally 

 conspicuous ; the tail was exactly alike in all its characters, 

 and the croup was pure white ; the head, however, was tinted 

 with a shade of red, evidently derived from the Spot, and was 

 of a paler blue than in the rock-pigeon, as was the stomach. 

 So that two black Barbs, a red Spot, and a white Fantail, as 

 the four purely-bred grandparents, produced a bird exhibiting 

 the general blue colour, together with every characteristic 

 mark, the wild Columba lima. 



With respect to crossed breeds frequently producing blue 

 birds chequered with black, and resembling in all respects 

 both the dovecot-pigeon and the chequered wild variety of 

 the rock-pigeon, the statement before referred to by MM. 

 Boitard and Corbie would almost suffice ; but I will give 

 three instances of the appearance of such birds from crosses 

 in which one alone of the parents or great-grandparents was 

 blue, but not chequered. I crossed a male blue Turbit with a 

 snow-white Trumpeter, and the following year with a dark, 

 leaden-brown, Short- faced Tumbler ; the offspring from the 

 first cross were as perfectly chequered as any dovecot-pigeon ; 

 and from the second, so much so as to be nearly as black as 

 the most darkly chequered rock -pigeon from Madeira. Another 

 bird, whose great-grandparents were a white Trumpeter, a 

 white Fantail, a white Red-spot, a red Ennt, and a blue Pouter, 

 was slaty-blue and chequered exactly like a dovecot-pigeon. 

 I may here add a remark made to me by Mr. Wicking, who 

 has had more experience than any other person in England in 

 breeding pigeons of various colours : namely, that when a blue, 

 or a blue and chequered bird, having black wing-bars, once 

 appears in any race and is allowed to breed, these characters 

 are so strongly transmitted that it is extremely difficult to 

 eradicate them. 



What, then, are we to conclude from this tendency in all 

 the chief domestic races, both when purely bred and more 

 especially when intercrossed, to produce offspring of a blue 

 colour, with the same characteristic marks, varying in the 

 same manner, as in Columbia livia ? If we admit that these 

 races are all descended from 0. livia, no breeder will doubt 

 that the occasional appearance of blue birds thus characterised 



