38 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



entailing corresponding differences in their skulls. The 

 carrier, more especially the male bird, is also remarkable 

 from the wonderful development of the carunculated skin 

 about the head ; and this is accompanied by greatly elongated 

 eyelids, very large external orifices to the nostrils, and a 

 vv^ide gape of mouth. The short- faced tumbler has a beak 

 in outline almost like that of a finch; and the common 

 tumbler has the singular inherited habit of flying at a great 

 height in a compact flock, and tumbling in the air head over 

 heels. The runt is a bird of great size, with long massive 

 beak and large feet; some of the sub-breeds of runts have 

 very long necks, others very long wings and tails, others 

 singularly short tails. The barb is allied to the carrier, but, 

 instead of a long beak, has a very short and broad one. The 

 pouter has a much elongated body, wings, and legs ; and 

 its enormously developed crop, which it glories in inflating, 

 may well excite astonishment and even laughter. The turbit 

 has a short and conical beak, with a line of reversed feathers 

 down the breast; and it has the habit of continually expand- 

 ing, slightly, the upper part of the oesophagus. The Jacobin 

 has the feathers so much rcA^ersed along the back of the neck 

 that they form a hood; and it has, proportionally to its 

 size, elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and 

 laugher, as their names express, utter a very different coo 

 from the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty 

 tail-feathers, instead of twelve or fourteen — the normal 

 number in all the members of the great pigeon family : these 

 feathers are kept expanded, and are carried so erect, that in 

 good birds the head and tail touch: the oil-gland is quite 

 aborted. Several other less distinct breeds might be 

 specified. 



In the skeletons of the several breeds, the development of 

 the bones of the face in length and breadth and curvature 

 differs enormously. The shape, as well as the breadth and 

 length of the ramus of the lower jaw, varies in a highly 

 remarkable manner. The caudal and sacral vertebrae vary 

 in number; as does the number of the ribs, together with 

 their relative breadth and the presence of processes. The size 

 and shape of the apertures in the sternum are highly vari- 

 able; so is the degree of divergence and relative size of tht 



