82 FURTHER DOUBTS. [CHAP. in. 



out being able to point out the time, the locality, or the 

 means. We surely cannot be condemned for profess- 

 ing utter scepticism in such an unsupported theory, and 

 a disbelief in so unattested a history. Other sceptics 

 have expressed their doubts on far weightier matters, 

 with much more conclusive testimony to allay those 

 doubts. 



Secondly, in the absence of these requisite par- 

 ticulars from the upholders of the transmutative theory 

 of creation, we are led to search among the older orni- 

 thologists for what can be found to illustrate the point. 

 We do not there light upon any mention of the sudden 

 appearance of new forms in the ancient Dovecotes. 



Aldrovandi (the volume to which we refer bears date 

 1 637) speaks of several of the Fancy Pigeons, not as 

 new, or produced by breeding, but as peregrinas, foreign 

 introductions, and points out the traditional source from 

 whence some of them were obtained. The Jacobines, 

 " which are called culcellata, monachince, and at Fer- 

 rara, Sorella, or Nuns," he styles the Columba Cypria, 

 or Dove of Cyprus. Another sort is the Columba Cre- 

 tensis, or Cretan Pigeon; and there are, besides, the 

 Persian and the Turkish. That the ancients were not 

 acquainted with so many varieties as ourselves is to be 

 imagined, from their scanty geographical knowledge and 

 limited foreign intercourse. Here is the amount of 

 Aldrovandi 's information : " But whether M. Varro, 

 Aristotle, and the other ancients, were acquainted with 

 the species of Pigeons which our times now furnish, I 

 not only do not doubt about, but am not even led to 

 believe it, although I well know that the ancient 

 Romans had an insane passion for Pigeons, as I have 

 before related from Pliny. Now-a-days, such a diver- 



