116 ORTHOGENETIC EVOLUTION IN PIGEONS. 



Buch of Mr. Gustav Priitz. 40 In the picture we see that the whole bird is one even 

 delicate gray, with the two black bars reduced much in width and each bar of two 

 colors — white followed by a "crescentic black border" (the black is subterminal, 

 not at the ends of the feathers). 



How can such results come about? My red-barred pigeons threw gray rock- 

 pigeons with black bars (a third bar present). I mated the male parent with one 

 of these gray birds. The next young were partly one color, partly the other. The 

 young with black bars, after molting a few times, showed the bars subdivided into 

 a wider anterior band of red and a narrow posterior black border. This differentia- 

 tion came in by degrees and was sometimes weak and sometimes sharp. One of 

 these birds, a female, was then mated with a male of her kind which had consider- 

 able white — white primaries and white patches on head and neck. They threw a 

 young male in which the anterior red part of the bar became more or less white — 

 more white towards the lower edge of the wing. This bird I now have (February 

 1903); he shows white primaries and white patches on the head, neck, and breast, 

 and white mixed into the basal half of the tail-feathers. 



I give these facts to show how we can get to a white-and-black bar. The white 

 can be reduced in width and the same marking extended to all the coverts. It is 

 in this way that we get the scaled ice-dove (Columba badia). 



The same white-and-black bars are shown in Columba pilcata, the white-headed 

 or priest dove. 41 Here the white part of the feather-tip is wider, and the black is only a 

 narrow border. The monk-dove (C. albicavda monachus) shows the same condition. 



In the blondinette (Columba stictce) we get every feather actually "tipped with 

 a narrow black crescent," followed anteriorly by a red bar, while the rest of the 

 feather is white. This marking — black, red, white — is carried out uniformly in 

 each feather of the wing, and even in the primaries and tail-feathers. 



The black crescentic tip is also well known in the wing of the satinette. This 

 tricolored variegated plumage, in which the colors are arranged in marvelous order 

 and regularity on each feather, is a perfect marvel of beauty. This is the race in 

 which "white spots" with penciled outlines and lacings were first introduced. No 

 spots of this kind were known before the arrival of the satinette, which is of oriental 

 origin, but of unknown history. 42 



The posterior scapulars and long coverts (pi. 55, fig. 12) of this bird illustrate 

 beautifully the fact that these remarkable spots are based on the old black spots 

 or centers. Take the original black spots and whiten the centers until nothing is 

 left but a narrow outline of black; then remove this black outline on the sides or 

 edge of the feather, leaving the spots bounded with black only on their inner and 

 outer ends, and we get feathers edged with black. A specimen at hand has nearly 

 all of the coverts and scapulars of the wing thus edged with these subterminal black 

 bars. The "black edge" is thus reached in the satinette quite differently from the 

 way in which the black edging appears in Geopelia humeralis. 



40 L. c; see one of the plates preceding page 44, where the ice-dove is described. 

 " L. c; see plate following page 51 of that work for a good illustration. 



'■'See Fulton's Book of Pigeons, Cassel & Co., London, L895, and the interesting account given by Mr. H. P. 

 Caridia, who introduced these birds into England (page 380). 



Note. — The manuscripts or records used in the preparation of this chapter were found in folders designated 

 as follows: A 6, A 20, C 21, EM 1, H 9, H 11, H 13; 000, 8, 17, 18, 20; P 4, R 16, Sh 9/13, W 8, W 10, WW 2, WW 3 

 XG 26, XW 1.— Ed. 



