214 DOMESTIC PIGEONS : Chap. VI 



descended from a single stock, we have in Columba llvia a 

 still existing and widely distributed species, which can be 

 and has been domesticated in various countries. This species 

 agrees in most points of structure and in all its habits of 

 life, as well as occasionally in every detail of plumage, with 

 the several domestic races. It breeds freely with them, and 

 produces fertile offspring. It varies in a state of nature, 30 

 and still more so when semi-domesticated, as shown by 

 comparing the Sierra Leone pigeons with those of India, or 

 with those which apparently have run wild in Madeira. It 

 has undergone a still greater amount of variation in the case 

 of the numerous toy-pigeons, which no one supposes to be 

 descended from distinct species ; yet some of these toy- 

 pigeons have transmitted their character truly for centuries. 

 Why, then, should we hesitate to believe in that greater 

 amount of variation which is necessary for the production of 

 the eleven chief races ? It should be borne in mind that in 

 two of the most strongly-marked races, namely, Carriers and 

 Short-faced Tumblers, the extreme forms can be connected 

 with the parent-species by graduated differences not greater 

 than those which mav be observed between the dovecot- 

 pigeons inhabiting different countries, or between the various 

 kinds of toy-pigeons, — gradations which must certainly be 

 attributed to variation. 



That circumstances have been eminently favourable for 

 the modification of the pigeon through variation and selec- 

 tion will now be shown. The earliest record, as has been 

 pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius, of pigeons in a 

 domesticated condition, occurs in the fifth Egyptian dynasty, 

 about 3000 b.c. ; 31 but Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, 

 informs me that the pigeon appears in a bill of fare in the 

 previous dynasty. Domestic pigeons are mentioned in 

 Genesis, Leviticus, and Isaiah. 32 In the time of the Romans, 



30 It deserves notice, as bearing on predicament. This is the case, as Mr. 



the general subject of variation, that Blyth has remarked to me, with 



not only C. livia presents several wild Treron, Palumbus, and Turtur. 

 forms, regarded by some naturalists as 31 ' Denkm'aler,' Abth. ii. Bl. 70. 



species and by others as sub-species or 32 The ' Dovecote,' by the Rev. E. S. 



as mere varieties, but that the species Dixon, 1851, pp. 11-13. Adolphe 



of several allied genera are in the same Pictet (in his ' Les Origines InJo- 



