199 FRILL-BREASTED PIGEONS. 



frill, &c. The difference between the two varieties consists only 

 in size, and greater variety of colour. 



Size. — The English Owl is wanted as large as possible, so 

 that it may present a contrast with the African, as the Pouter 

 does with the Pigmy Pouter. To gain size, it is said that 

 crossing with the Short-faced Antwerp, which is of Owl descent, 

 has been resorted to, and that the Barb has been used to give 

 breadth of skull. • 



Colour. — The English Owl is self-coloured, and exists in 

 white, black, red, yellow, dun, blue, silver, and in various off 

 colours, as mealies and chequers. Splashed Owls are not re- 

 garded, except it may be locally, or as stock birds. The blues 

 and silvers are chiefly fancied and bred, and the best English 

 Owls are of these colours. The blues should be of a deep, sound, 

 rich colour, even in tone, with broad black wing and tail bars, 

 and dark hackle, lustrous with green and purple hues. The 

 silvers should be of a light creamy dun body colour, with very 

 dark dun wing and tail bars, merging into black, and with 

 lustrous dun hackle. "White rumps in both are faulty, but 

 cannot be regarded in blue and silver pigeons as blemishes of 

 the same degree of magnitude as when occurring in blacks, reds, 

 or yellows. The chief defects are indistinctness and bad colour 

 of wing bars, ticked or slightly chequered wing coverts, some- 

 times showing indications of a third bar, and too light body 

 colour and hackle, through crossing with the powdered blues 

 and silvers ; these latter, as varieties of the blues and silvers, 

 require special mention, as they have a history of their own. 



As the author of the " Treatise on Pigeons " (1765) says, 

 regarding blue Owls, " The lighter they are in colour, par- 

 ticularly in the hackle, the more they are valued," a dis- 

 tinction not recorded by Moore thirty years previously, and 

 as the true Mahomet Pigeon, unknown to Moore, was well- 

 described by the author of the above quotation, I have thought 

 that it had been made use of in his time to produce the colour 

 known as powdered blue, as it certainly has of late years. 



