DOMESTIC PIGEONS 41 



civilised man succeeded in thorouj^hly domesticating several 

 species, but that he intentionally or by chance picked out 

 extraordinarily abnormal species ; and further, that these very 

 species have since all become extinct or unknown. So many 

 strange contingencies are improbable in the highest degree. 

 Some facts in regard to the colouring of pigeons well de- 

 serve consideration. The rock-pigeon is of a slaty-blue, with 

 white loins;' but the Indian sub-species, C. intermedia of 

 Strickland, has this part bluish. The tail has a terminal dark 

 bar, with the outer feathers externally edged at the base with 

 white. The wings have two black bars. Some semi-domes- 

 tic breeds, and some truly wild breeds, have, besides the two 

 black bars, the wings chequered with black. These several 

 marks do not occur together in any other species of the whole 

 family. Now, in every one of the domestic breeds, taking 

 thoroughly well-bred birds, all the above marks, even to the 

 white edging of the outer tail-feathers, sometimes concur 

 perfectly developed. Moreover, w'hen birds belonging to two 

 or more distinct breeds are crossed, none of which are blue 

 or have any of the above-specified marks, the mongrel off- 

 spring are very apt suddenly to acquire these characters. To — 

 give one instance out of several which I have observed : — I 1 

 crossed some white fantails, which breed very true, with some \ 

 black barbs — and it so happens that blue varieties of barbs 

 are so rare that I never heard of an instance in England; and 

 the mongrels were black, brown, and mottled. I also crossed 

 a barb with a spot, which is a white bird with a red tail and 

 red spot on the forehead, and which notoriously breeds very 

 true ; the mongrels were dusky and mottled. I then crossed 

 one of the mongrel barb-fantails with a mongrel barb-spot, 

 and they produced a bird of as beautiful a blue colour, with 

 the white loins, double black wing-bar, and barred and white- / 

 edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon ! We can under- y* 

 stand these facts, on the well-known principle of reversion to 

 ancestral characters, if all the domestic breeds are descended 

 from the rock-pigenn. But if we deny this, we must make 

 one of the two following highly improbable suppositions. 

 Either, first, that all the several imagined aboriginal stocks 

 were coloured and marked like the rock-pigeon, although no 

 other existing species is thus coloured and marked, so that in 



