156 On the Inheritance of Colour in Pigeons 



no dun or silver in their ancestry as far as Mr Woods knows. He has 

 had 40 years experience of pigeons. The colour of the birds resembles 

 that of the Rock Dove, except that the rump is light blue instead of 

 white. The wing and tail bars are black. 



Silver Dragoons. A pair of these birds was obtained from Mr F. 

 Smalley, a joint author of the paper on colour inheritance alluded to in 

 the introduction to the present report. Mr Smalley stated that they 

 had been bred from silvers since 1903, and that he had reason to 

 believe they had been so bred fuither back still, but he warned 

 me that it is practically impossible to obtain a silver that does not 

 possess some blue and grizzle blood in its ancestry. The colour of 

 these birds is similar to that of the Silver Rock Doves already described, 

 but the shade of the wing and tail bars is much darker. This matter 

 has been discussed in the introduction. 



Silver Owls. It was originally intended to use only Dragoons for 

 the silver birds in these experiments, but on mating a Dragoon (/" 

 to a Fantail $ it was found that they did not breed, and so a smaller 

 variety was considered necessary. A pair of Silver Owls was therefore 

 procured from Mr Reid of Barnsly which had been bred from Silvers 

 for two and four generations respectively. The colour of these birds is 

 identical with that of the Silver Dragoons. 



Grosses heUueen Silver Owls and Black Fantails. 



This cross was made both ways, and the results are given in 

 Tables VI, Exps. 75 and 7G. 



It will be seen that when the ^ was black only one type was pro- 

 duced in Fi, which was black, whereas when the (f was silver, blacks 

 and duns were produced, the blacks being (/s and the duns $s'. 

 (%. Table VI, Exps. 75 and 76.) 



TABLE VI. 



Offspring 



Exp. No. Female Origin Male Origin Black Dun Blue Silver 



75 Silver Owl 4 — Black Fantail _ g _ _ _ 



(no number) 



7C Black Fantail 933 — Silver Owl — 6 5 — — 



(no number) 



77 Dun Carrier 209 — Blue Dragoon 877 — 9 — — — 



78 Black C. D. 919 77 Black C. D. 920 77 5 1 1 ? 1 



1 Six pairs of black F{s have been mated together this year. The result so far 

 (April 23rd) is Black 6, Dun 5, Blue 2, Silver 2. Further two dun Fj ? s have been mated 

 with two black F^i f, and have produced Black 3, Dun 2, Blue 0, Silver 1. 



