CHAPTER LXIV. 



THE AFRICAN OWL PIGEON. 



'The African owl pigeon may be taken as the chief representative of 

 the race of frill-breasted, guUeted, round-headed, down-faced pigeons, 

 because it comes nearest to the ideal standard of perfection which fanciers 

 have agreed upon as being the correct type of the whole family in its 

 various sub-varieties. This race of pigeons is not only one of the 

 most original, but it is one of the most beautiful and engaging, its 

 varieties being general favourites. Some of the countries bordering 

 on the Mediterranean Sea would seem to be the home of this family 

 of pigeons, as those we had in this country, or from France and Germany, 

 before the introduction of Tunis owls and Turkish friUed pigeons, were 

 very much inferior in many respects. There is only a meagre account 

 of them in our early literature. Willughby says : " Turbits, of the 

 meaning and original of which name I must confess myself to be ignorant : 

 they have a very short thick Bill, like that of a Bullfinch ; the crown of 

 their head is flat and depressed ; the feathers on the Breast reflected both 

 ways. They are about the bigness of the Jaoobines, or a little bigger. 

 I take these to be the Candy or Indian doves of Aldrovand, tom. 

 2, pp. 477-478, the Low Dutch Cortbeke." A naturalist, describing the 

 turbit at the present time, might give a similar description, the head 

 being " flat and depressed " in the great majority. From the following 

 account of the turbit and owl, by Moore, the description of the latter 

 being the first notice by name there is of it, it will bo seen how much he 

 was indebted to Willughby, who wrote about sixty years before him : 



" The Turlit. — The Reason, why this Pigeon is so nam'd by the English, 

 I cannot by any Means account for ; the low Dutch call it Cort-hcke or 

 Short-hill upon the Account of the Shortness of its Beak. It is a small 

 Pigeon very little bigger than a Jacobine, its Beak is very short like a 



