CHAP, v.] SPECULATIONS. 167 



serve to be fairly considered, although Mr. Yarrell has 

 not admitted it into his arrangement of British birds. 

 It did not enter into that gentleman's plan to include 

 domesticated varieties ; and he doubtless regarded this 

 as a mere offspring of altered conditions from a state of 

 nature, and a case of " breaking," as it is called, in co- 

 louring. 



But what is it that we give to, or provide for, our 

 Tame and Dovehouse Pigeons, that should give rise to 

 such wonderful physical changes ? Tbe Fancy kinds, 

 after we haw received them in that character, are indeed 

 confined, over-fed, and kept warm, without, however, any 

 remarkable novelties being ever struck out, that any one 

 can undertake to demonstrate. But the others have 

 much their usual food and exercise and dwellings : they 

 are not more snug in the Pigeon-loft than they would 

 be in a hole in a rock, or in a ruin : they cannot fill 

 their crops fuller in the court-yard than they would on 

 the barley stubble, the pea-field, or the new-sown wheat: 

 and to us the great wonder is that naturalists have not 

 shrunk from admitting effects without causes quite so 

 readily as they have done. 



Mr. Blyth proceeds : " Here, again, we have three 

 closely-allied species (namely, the intermedia, the livia, 

 and the affinis), analogous to the three yellow-footed 

 Hurrials, or arboreal fruit-eating Doves ; and if they 

 are to be regarded as mere varieties of the same, what 

 limits can be assigned to the further variation of wild 

 species ? Col. leuconota is but a step more removed, 

 and I doubt not would equally merge and blend with the 

 others in a state of domesticity. Equally allied are 

 Treron sphenura and Tr. cantillans ; Tr. apicauda and 

 Tr. oxyura ; and if we grant also some variation of size, 



