255 POUTING PIGEONS. 



selection of the most diminutive and Pouter-like birds for the 

 last fourteen years. Its genealogical family tree, as far as I can 

 trace it, starts from a whole-coloured blue Austrian Pouter 

 cock I bought, in 1866, from the late Mr. Evans, of the Borough, 

 at that time a good Pouter fancier. This bird was quite bare 

 on shanks, and nearly so on toes, but very small, and of fine 

 form. I mated him to a blue Pouter hen, a weed, small, gay 

 in marking, and well-feathered on limbs and toes, determined 

 to try to breed dwarf Pouters on the same principle as Game 

 Bantams were produced. I in-bred for five years, and then 

 obtained a whole-coloured, mealy-chequered cock, with good 

 limbs and toe feathering, finding it more difficult to obtain the 

 latter points than correct markings. I mated him to my best 

 pied hen, and from them got whole-coloured and foul-marked 

 dun, mealy, satinette, and other nondescript colours. In- 

 breeding then for some years with the blue pieds, they produced 

 some black and blue splashes — some dark, others nearly white. ■ 

 Prom two black splashed cocks, mated to a silver and a blue 

 pied hen, in one season was produced two blacks — a cock and 

 hen — which are the parents of the little black pied wonder. 

 Its dimensions are : Length of limb, Sfin. ; length of feather, 

 13iin. There are bred from it, this season, two black pieds, two 

 blue pieds, two black and one blue splashes, all small and 

 stylish, but none equal to the parent in markings or combi- 

 nation of Pouter properties; still, I do not despair of produc- 

 ing other equally perfect specimens of the miniature Pouter 

 of the period." 



With reference to the above, not having seen the bird 

 described, I could not make any comparison between it and a 

 good Cropper ; all I could say was, that I preferred such 

 Croppers as I had to any foreign Pigmy Pouters I have seen. 

 Knowing that a Pouter with Tin. limbs, properly shaped, and 

 rightly placed in the body, can afford to measure IGgin. in 

 feather, if such length is made up in a certain way, as described, 

 I at once saw that Captain Hill's Pigmy was quite out of this 



