100 Fancy Pigeons. 



the white must be so intensified as to take the form of a crescent or half 

 moon, as in the starlins;. The back and scapular feathers and wing 

 coverts should be spangled or chequered with black on their creamy 

 white extremities, and the pattern this spangling assumes is of different 

 kinds. It may either be in a triangular form, or the feathers may be 

 laced round with black, though I have never seen the latter form so 

 perfect as in the illustration in Tegetmeier's Pigeon Book ; but as the 

 Eastern blondinette pigeons can be bred beautifully and regularly laced 

 on the wing coverts, the same style of marking may yet be produced in 

 the Suabian. The primaries or flight feathers should be black, with 

 creamy white oval spots near their extremities ; and although it is rare 

 to get specimens marked in a similar way on the principal tail feathers, 

 no bird can be considered perfect without this. The lower back, belly, 

 vent and thighs, should also be as black as possible, and in theory these 

 parts should show the starling marking as well, but it will be found that 

 this can only be attained by an excess of marking on the neck and wing 

 coverts. To produce the happy medium in marking, and have birds with 

 neither too little nor too much of it, is the difficult point to attain in the 

 Suabian, and as its marking is of such an artificial character, it is no 

 easy matter to breed it true. It is only after the first moult that its 

 beauties become apparent, the nestling being of a rusty red, as in the 

 starling, and not even then does it attain its full beauty, as the secondary 

 flights are not fully moulted in its first year, but in its second. With 

 age it often becomes blotched and irregular in spangling, like other 

 pigeons of variegated feather. The beak and toe nails should be black, 

 and the irides orange or red. Brent mentions a sub- variety with white 

 upper mandible and head, like the priest, and Neumeistor one with white 

 flights and tail, both of which I consider quite out of keeping with the 

 character of the breed. 



Besides the black grounded Suabian, there is another form in which the 

 ground colour is of a ruddy brown or chocolate hue. These have been 

 called Porcelains, which name has also been applied to a sub-variety of 

 the hyacinth ; but it would be better to allow them to be known as 

 brown-spangled Suabians. This sub-variety should possess the same 

 characteristics as the other, and the more decided and pronounced it is in 

 its ground colour the better. Many specimens are neither one thing nor 

 another in their ground tint, and all such, unless for any special quality 



