66 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



ing sometimes as much as the carrier. The fan- 

 tail has thirty or forty feathers in its tail, while all 

 other varieties have only twelve or fourteen, the 

 normal number for birds. The trumpeter, so 

 named on account of its peculiar coo, has an 

 umbrella-like hood of feathers covering its head 

 and face, and its feet are so heavily feathered that 

 they look like little wings. In the correct speci- 

 mens of this variety the feathers have to be clipped 

 from the face before the birds can see to feed 

 themselves. The pouter has the absurd habit of 

 inflating its gullet to a prodigious size, and the 

 Jacobin wears a gigantic ruff. The homing pigeon 

 has such a strong attachment for its cote that it 

 will travel hundreds of miles, sometimes as many 

 as 1,400 miles, in order to reach the home from 

 which it has been separated. But it is not simply 

 in their colour, size, habits, and plumage, that 

 pigeons vary. There are corresponding differences 

 in their structures, in the number of their ribs and 

 vertebrae, in the shape and size of the skull, in 

 the bones of the face, in the development of the 

 breast-bone, and in the length of the neck, legs, 

 and bill. Pigeons also differ in the shape and size 

 of their eggs, and in their dispositions and voice. 

 ' There is,' says Huxley in summing up his dis- 

 cussion of the great variety in these birds, * hardly 

 a particular of either internal econony or external 

 shape which has not by selective breeding been 

 perpetuated and become the foundation of a new 

 race ' (n). 



All of the 150 different varieties of domestic 



