192 FANCY PIGEONS. 



On reading tlie descriptions of tlie Turbit and Owl in the 

 Treatise of 1765, whicli are very much more extensive than 

 Moore's, it would appear that either some recent importations 

 of finer Owls had been made, or that breeders had effected great 

 improvements on the old stock. The illustrations accompanying 

 the descriptions differ very little in their outlines : both are 

 plain-headed ; exactly alike in beak, that of the Owl not being 

 hooked; the chief difference lying in the Turbit's head being 

 very round, while the Owl is rather flat-crowned. The author 

 says : " The owl is, according to Mr. Moore, a small Pigeon, 

 very little larger than a jacobine, which might be their 

 size in his time; but at present they are brought to such 

 perfection, that they are hardly, if anything, larger than a 

 very small tumbler. . . . Its plumage is always of one entire 

 colour, as white, a fine sky-blue, black, and yellow, &c., except 

 some that are chequered. The blue ones should have black 

 bars cross the wings; and the lighter they are in colour, par- 

 ticularly in the hackle, the more they are valued." He 

 mentions the gullet, " reaching down from the beak to the 

 frill," both in the Owl and Turbit ; and that the latter, when 

 red and yellow, had white, not coloured, tails. For about a 

 hundred years after the preceding was written, or till about 

 1860, there seems to have been no improvement made in 

 pigeons of the Owl tribe in England; I rather think they 

 must have lost quality from neglect. Mr. Jayne says the 

 African Owl was used as part of the composition of the Short- 

 faced Tumbler, but the record of how and when is lost. Mr. 

 Fulton says, in his book, that a Dundee fancier had African 

 Owls in 1838, and that they were brought to this country by 

 his brother. From what I was told by the said fancier years 

 ago, I could never believe the pigeons in question were African 

 Owls. In 1838 he would be about twenty years of age, and 

 his elder brother, who was not a seafaring man, having occa- 

 sion to make a voyage to the Baltic, brought home with him 

 some coloured-tailed White Owls, which were, doubtless, the 



