90 Colour and Other Characters in Pigeons 



mating consisted of a * Red ' Homer $ with no feathers on the legs 

 crossed with a Blue Tumbler cT with fully-feathered legs. The legs and 

 toes were completely feathered, the feathers on the outer and middle 

 toes being of considerable size. These two birds produced three young, 

 all with feathers on the legs and the outer and middle toes, but not on 

 the inner toe. The feathered cock then died, and two of the ^i young 

 were paired together and produced 34 young in ^2- Not all of 

 these lived till maturity, but they were classified as 12 fully-feathered 

 like the feathered grandparent (4 being doubtful as to whether they 

 were 'fully' or 'half feathered), ]5 half-feathered like the F^ birds, 

 and 7 with no trace of feathering. There was thus evident segregation, 

 but with an apparent excess of fully-feathereds. Two of the unfeathered 

 F^ birds were paired together and gave 12 young with no feathers 

 on the legs or feet ; the extracted recessives thus bred true. I failed 

 to get any young from F^ fully-feathereds paired together, but one of 

 these paired with an unfeathered bird produced by the F^ unfeathereds 

 gave one young one with unfeathered legs. Although therefore the 

 feathered parent was apparently fully-feathered, this experiment proves 

 it to have been heterozygous. The excess of fully-feathered in F^ is 

 thus explained, and it may be concluded that leg-feathering and its 

 absence behave as an allelomorphic pair, but that the character is 

 incompletely and somewhat irregularly dominant. 



It should be mentioned that in another series of experiments 

 described below (mating Da), two Fantails paired together neither of 

 which had feathered legs, produced among four young, one in which 

 the legs and toes were distinctly though slightly feathered. No other 

 similar case occurred among the birds of this series, and the occur- 

 rence of feathering in this one bird must probably be considered as 

 a 'sport.' 



Series B. Tail feathers, oil gland, and colour. 



In the second series of experiments, a Red Tumbler $ was crossed 

 with a White Fantail cT, in order to follow the inheritance of the colour 

 and of the ' fantail ' character. The Red Tumbler was completely red 

 except that the outer webs of the outer tail feathers were white ; the 

 legs were red, claws pale, bill pink, and iris light pink. The White 

 Fantail had all its feathers completely white, the legs red with pale 

 claws, bill pink, iris very dark brown. It had 23 tail feathers. These 

 two birds produced ten young which lived long enough to be capable of 

 description. They were all very similar in character. The general 



