Chapter XXIV. 



X WATTLED PIGEONS. X> 

 The Barb Pigeon. 



lHAKESPEARE'S reference to the Barbary 

 Pigeon makes it the earliest noticed variety 

 that I know of in our literature. As Willughby 

 gives a recognisable description of the Barb, 

 under the same name (Barbary Pigeon), within 

 a hundred years of Shakespeare's allusion to it, there can 

 be no reasonable doubt that this breed has been cultivated for 

 at least three centuries in our country. Willughby describes 

 it as having a bill like that of a Bullfinch, with a circle of 

 naked, tuberous, white flesh, round its eyes, as in the Carriers, 

 and with white irides ; and adds : " My worthy friend, Mr. 

 Phillip Skippon, in a letter to me concerning tame pigeons, 

 writes that the eyes of this kind are red." 



I think it likely enough that Willughby's " worthy friend " 

 was Major General Phillip Skippon, who was so much associated 

 with Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War ; and if so, he is the 

 earliest English pigeon fancier of whom we know anything. 

 The part he took in the troubled times in which he lived may 

 be learned from Carlyle's "Letters of Cromwell." He was 



