215 FRILL-BREASTED PIGEONS. 



who says lie has traced it back for 120 years, through three 

 generations of fanciers. When he wrote the account of it 

 in Mr. Fulton's book, about 1874, he said that an aged Pres- 

 byter in Smyrna, then upwards of eighty years of age, had 

 bred them all his life, and that his father and grandfather 

 had done so before him. 



The ground colour of the shoulders of this pigeon, after 

 it has cast its nest feathers, should be of clear pink-brown, 

 or nearly of a flesh colour, each feather being laced round 

 with lustrous purple-black; or the same with an inner 

 lacing of reddish brown, making the plumage tricoloured. 

 This is what I consider the most beautiful marking; but 

 it is not the only one. Some of them are chequered, at 

 the extremity of each shoulder feather, with a triangular, 

 or arrow-pointed mark, which often runs too large, and 

 which, when blue in colour, as it very often is, consider- 

 ably spoils the appearance of a bird. Small triangular 

 chequers of purple -black are very pleasing on the flesh- 

 coloured ground, and even small blue markings are pretty ; 

 but when the general appearance is more blue than flesh- 

 coloured, the effect is spoiled. The tail and its coverts should 

 be as in a blue chequered pigeon, and on the black bar, at 

 the extremity of each primary tail feather, there ought to 

 be a large round white spot, which gives a fine effect when 

 the tail is outspread. The shaft of the tail feather should 

 be dark throughout, and this has also a nice effect, running 

 through the white spot. 



The Brunette bears the same relation to the Satinette as 

 a silver does to a blue pigeon. Its ground colour should be 

 of a silvery dun tint, each feather being laced or chequered 

 with dark dun. Its tail is much the same colour as that of 

 a silver pigeon, and the bar at its extremity should show the 

 same large round white spot as in the Satinette. Its more 

 correct name would be Dun-laced, or Spangled Satinette, ac- 

 cording to the style of its marking. 



