The Feather's Practical Pigeon Booli 



of an enormous price that will so stagger you as to make 

 it seem an impossibility for you to indulge in the diver- 

 sion of pigeon breeding. 



The high-class pigeons mentioned in my classifica- 

 tions are always expensive, and the better, the specimen 

 the better the price. A very little difference in the qual- 

 ity of individual birds will make a vast difference in 

 value. This feature extends through the whole list of 

 fancy pigeons; particular excellence in some desirable 

 quality in different members correspondingly increases 

 their value and price. It is hard to comprehend when 

 first becoming interested in pigeons why those which 

 which show to the inexperienced so little real difference 

 from others near by are yet held at so much higher fig- 

 ures. Experience soon teaches this difference and shows 

 how, as I have said, a little difference in quality makes a 

 great difference in value. 



So in purchasing be at first satisfied with rather a 

 mediocre quality of birds in appearance, as long as you 

 know their antecedents are good. Pedigree breeding 

 has not as yet been practiced in pigeon breeding to any 

 great extent, but there are those who pay some atten- 

 tion to it, and we are gradually working up to it. Pedi- 

 greed birds, while they may not always produce perfect 

 progeny, are less likely to sport, and throw something 

 that you are not looking for, than birds picked up here 

 and there and thrown promiscuously together with no 

 question as to their origin. Hence if you can start with 

 pairs of which you can have some idea of the parentage, 

 it will be a factor in your favor. There is such a tend- 

 ency to retroversion (that is, throwing back to original 

 parents) among these birds of uncertain breeding, that 

 while parents may have every appearance of quality, 

 their young may prove to be nothing but "scrubs." The 



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