225 POUTING PIGEONS. 



a Horseman and a Cropper, and by matching their young ones 

 over and over to the Cropper, Experience teaches us, it will 

 add a wonderful Beauty to this Bird, and raise in it the five 

 following Properties." Though Moore does not say what kind 

 of Cropper was used for breeding the English Pouter, the 

 inference is that he referred to the aforesaid Dutch variety, 

 which is, in fact, the only Cropper he describes. His description 

 of what constituted a good English Pouter in 1735, is, indeed, 

 excellent, so far as it goes ; and though he does not go minutely 

 into the appearance of the bird, his account of it, had nothing 

 been added by the author of the Treatise of 1765, would give 

 those who read his work to-day the idea that our Pouter is 

 identical with the one he describes. During the thirty years 

 following the publication of Moore's work, however, a con- 

 siderable advance appears to have been made in the breed- 

 ing of fancy pigeons, as I learn from the following, taken from 

 the preface of the Treatise of 1765, page xiv. : " It is to be ob- 

 served that the species in general, and the Almond Tumbler 

 in particular, are, from great care and expence in breeding them, 

 arrived to so great a perfection, and so different from what 

 they were twenty or thirty years past, that if a person who 

 had been a fancier at that period, and had quitted the fancy, 

 and not been conversant therein during the intermediate time, 

 was to give his opinion now, he would be apt to condemn 

 them, for no other reason than because they are not like what 

 used to be thought good when he was in the fancy before; 

 for instance, the Powter was formerly bred with thin legs, 

 and void of feathers on them, which by the present fanciers 

 are in no esteem, and called by them naked and wire-legg'd, 

 who now endeavour to breed them with strong substantial 

 limbs, and well feathered." 



One of the set of eight old oil paintings of fancy pigeons 

 which I am fortunate in having acquired, and which I have 

 before referred to (see page 178), represents a magnificent 

 black-pied Pouter cock of the kind stated by the above- 



x 



