THE



BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE



AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. II. — NO. 15. JANUARY, 1896.



IDENTIFICATION OF RARE DOVES.


By O. B. Cri3SSWEI.Iv.


I have for several years been interested in the Columbine

tribe. When first I began my collection of Doves I found it

extremely difficult to identify those which I bought of various

importers, and even now I do not by any means find it easy to

do so, though there are only two or three of my stock about

whose corredt names I still have doubts. Why dealers should

be so specially vague about this genus, I cannot pronounce.

Probably it is because the genus is a very large one, and very

widely spread over the earth, and that real study is needed to

gain anything like accurate knowledge of it. There appears,

too, to be no great demand for foreign Doves, and consequently

vendors do not find it worth their while to take much trouble

about them. For those who may be inclined to try this

singularly varied and, as I think, interesting tribe, I may as

well relate three ways in which I have traced birds.


ist. By seeing living named specimens in public collec¬

tions, such as the Regent’s Park Gardens, the Antwerp and

Cologne collections, and the Jardiu d’Acclimatation in Paris.


and. From illustrated and descriptive books, such as

Selby’s volume on “Pigeons,” in the series of Jardine’s

“ Naturalists’ Bibrary,” and the works of Gould, Bevaillaut,

and Temmiuck.


3rd. By examining stuffed specimens in museums, and

especially by looking over some of the large collection of skins

at South Kensington, which, by the courtesy of the Curator of

the Ornithological Department of the British Museum, I have

been allowed to do.


All these three methods of study have, however, some

drawbacks, ist. From the vast number of species in this genus,

and the very slight difference between some of them, one finds

much diversity of nomenclature in different Zoological Societies ;



