226 FANCY PIGEONS. 



mentioned writer to have been fancied in Moore's time. As 

 this picture shows a bird quite bare in limb, with the excep- 

 tion of a few very short feathers down the outside of 

 the leg, and with none whatever on the toes, I think it, as 

 well as the others, must have been painted about the 

 time Moore wrote his book, for they are all uniform, and 

 evidently the work of the same artist. The pictures repre- 

 senting the other pigeons being life-size, I suppose that 

 of the black-pied cock to be the same; and although I 

 have occasionally seen a bird in life standing as high as he 

 does, it has been but seldom. He is 14in. from the crown of 

 his head to the soles of his feet, and must have measured 

 about 20in. in feather. He is short of bib, and his rose pinion 

 might have been dressed, had the artist meant to depict a 

 well-marked pigeon. I think, for this reason, the picture is 

 a portrait. I can scarcely believe that such a pigeon could 

 -have been produced, in the way Moore says, in a short period 

 of time, for the immense crop and intricate marking would 

 take long to fix after a cross with the Horseman ; and then, 

 "Willughby's description of the Pouter, such as it is, written 

 about sixty years before Moore's, is extant. At the same time, 

 when a drawing of a model Pouter is made, quite devoid of crop, 

 there can be seen in it much of the shape of the thorough- 

 bred Carrier, as anyone may prove for himself; so that it is 

 extremely likely that the union of such a bird as Moore's 

 Dutch Cropper and the Carrier would result, after a long, 

 careful breeding, in such a bird as the English Pouter. We 

 find that, with age, certain Pouters develop a good deal of 

 beak and eye wattle, though birds of the same family vary 

 greatly in this respect. If this be not derived from a remote 

 cross of the Carrier, either direct or through some of the long 

 Runts which likewise possess it, it must have -developed itself 

 in the Pouter race in the same way as in that of the Carrier. 

 There has arisen lately, in Germany, a theory that the English 

 Pouter might have been derived from the Pomeranian Cropper, 



