TJic Literature. ig 



baldpate tumblers, "The character of the head much resembles that o£ 

 the turbit and the jaeobine." 



This was my first book on fancy pigeons ; I saw it in a bookseller's win- 

 dow one day when trudging home from school, and began to save up 

 immediately for its acquisition. I soon had it by heart, and such 

 passages as " Tumblers, saith Willughby, are small and of divers colours. 

 They have strange motions, turning themselves backwards over their 

 head, and show like footballs in the air," are iudeUbly imprinted on my 

 memory. 



In 1S51, John Matthews Eaton, of London, an enthusiastic fancier of 

 short-faced tumblers, published a treatise on the Almond tumbler. This 

 and his other works are most quaintly written. All rules of grammar 

 and composition are set at defiance, irrelevant matter is constantly intro- 

 duced, and anecdotes, told in the most rambling style, are always cropping 

 up ; but his latest work, published in 1858, incorporating the previous 

 ones, is certainly one of the most interesting books on fancy pigeons ever 

 published. The greater part of the " Treatise on the Almond Tumbler " 

 (1851), is copied from Windus, and unacknowledged, a method of pub- 

 lication he afterwards departed from, when he scrupulously gave every 

 previous writer his due. He seemed to have been troubled with cacoiithes 

 scribendi, saying " all the world in a fever about the forthcoming exhibi- 

 tion, I was desirous of bringing out something ; after racking my brains 

 (which I think, generally, is about as clear as mud in a wine glass), the 

 idea of the almond tumbler struck me, which I brought out.' This book 

 is a thin octavo, having for a frontispiece a coloured portrait of an 

 almond tumbler " very masterly executed," as Mayor would have said, by 

 Mr. Dean Wostenholme, the friend of the author, a pigeon fancier him- 

 self. It is by far the best picture of a pigeon published up to that time, 

 and I question if it has been excelled since. 



Encouraged by his success, Eaton, who had obtained, after much seeking, 

 a copy of old Moore's " Columbarium," brought out in 18.52, "A Treatise 

 on the Art of Breeding and Managing Tame, Domesticated, and Fancy 

 Pigeons." In it he reprinted the "Columbarium," taking it as his text, 

 and adding thereto his own notes and what he found original from Mayor 

 and Girton. This book is uniform in size with his 1851 treatise, which 

 is embodied in it, and has for a frontispiece the same portrait of an 

 almond tumbler. At the same time he published a set of six life size 



