The Short-faced Antwerp. 149 



a fair but not excessive amount of wattle. Like other pigfeons of this 

 type of head, the beak wattle thickens with age ; it should be of 

 considerable substance, lyingf well spread on each side, and by the time 

 the bird arrives at maturity — some three or four years — it should have 

 filled up all inequalities in the curve of the head, and if it stands out a 

 little beyond the curve it is not considered any fault in a good bird. 

 Mere shortness of face, therefore, is no desideratum in this bird, but 

 rather the reverse, for room is required for the forehead behind the 

 beak wattle to fill out, and this is the point which gives a finish to a 

 good bird and makes it massive in skull. For this reason, the name 

 short-faced Antwerp has been objected to as inappropriate ; but as that 

 of exhibition Antwerp, which has been subsituted, applies equally to 

 other varieties of the breed, the long-faced and medium-faced, both of 

 them regularly exhibited, I prefer to keep the first title, both because 

 the bird has been known for long as the short-faced Antwerp, and 

 because it actually is so compared with the others. 



The short-faced Antwerp should be a large pigeon, bold in appearance, 

 upstanding, and tight feathered. The choicest colour is the mealy, 

 almost always now called silver-dun, which ia a good-sounding name, 

 but there is certainly no silver in this colour, neither is there any dun. 

 The mealy colour may be said to have been bred to perfection in this 

 pigeon. The cocks are sometimes finely powdered on the head and 

 upper neck, while the lower neck, breast, and wing bars are of a rich 

 brown or red ; but it is difficult to get the same colour in the hens, 

 which are generally dark headed. Next comes the red-chequer, both 

 dark and light ; the blue-chequer, also of various shades, and the 

 black-barred blue, the original colour of wild pigeons. These are the 

 chief colours, valued, I believe, in the order named. Then come silvers, 

 preferred with bars of as dark a dun as possible ; dun-chequers, called 

 silver-chequers ; yellow-mealies, called creamies ; and, lastly, blacks, 

 which are sooty or blue-black, showing bars of a deeper black. 



My opinion of the short-faced Antwerp is in accordance with that 

 of a great many men who are the mainstays of the pigeon fancy. I 

 cannot admit that it has one original point in its composition entitling 

 it to be called an original variety, and all the diagrams and illustrations 

 published of it only confirm this opinion. The chief difference between it 

 and the owl is said to be that the latter ia essentially a short-faced 



