197 FRILL-BREASTED PIGEONS. 



whole fancy presents, excepting the standard of no variety 

 whatever. 



LEGS AND FEET, small and neat, bright red in colour, and 

 free of feathers, from the hocks down. 



COLOUR. Self-coloured, white, blue, and black. It will be 

 noticed that Moore has mentioned these colours as those of 

 the Owl, and that other colours were not mentioned till thirty 

 years later. The majority of African Owls, as imported, are 

 whites, and black and blue pieds, whole blues and blacks 

 being, however, not uncommon. The number of splashed birds 

 that come would favour the idea, from their appearance, that 

 no regard is paid to the matching of them for colour. The only 

 apparent regular marking is white, with black or blue tail; 

 but nothing comes oftener from a pure white and whole blue 

 or black than such marking. From the fact of my having 

 bred pure white, whole blue, and black and blue splashes, from 

 a black- tailed white cock and blue- tailed white hen, I think 

 that, if Mr. Baily was not well informed when he told me how 

 these pigeons are bred in Tunis, very little regard to colour 

 must be given in matching them. No reds or yellows have 

 been brought here, so far as I know, nor even mealies, the 

 origin of these colours; but I would expect to find an occa- 

 sional mealy were I to visit the native place of these pigeons, 

 as such a natural variation is very likely to have been pro- 

 duced. I once had a blue hen, an imported bird, from Messrs. 

 Baily, with most of the frill white. I consider this marking 

 a very suitable one for the coloured Owl, and I am inclined to 

 think that the bird I had was not a mere chance production, 

 for I find notice of the same marking in Neumeister's book 

 among the Frilled Pigeons, all of which, whether self-coloured 

 or Turbit-marked, go by the name of Movchen (seagulls) in 

 Germany, so that the blue- shouldered variety seems to have 

 given the name to the entire family. The blue Tunis Owl 

 is often of a good deep sound colour, with jet black bars, and 

 is also frequently of a smoky tint, the evident result of having 



