Fancv Pio-eons. 



are valued." He mentions the gullet '* reacliino: down from the beak to 

 the frill," both in the owl and turbit, and that the latter, when red and 

 yellow, had white, not coloured tails. For about a hundred years after 

 the preceding was written, or till about 1S60, there seems to have been no 

 improvement made in pigeons of the owl tribe in England ; I rather think 

 they must have lost quality from neglect. Mr. Jayne says the African 

 owl was used as part of the composition of the short-faced tumbler, but 

 the record of how and when is lost. Mr. Fulton says in his book that a 

 Dundee fancier had African owls in 183S, and that they were brought to 

 this country by his brother. From what I was told by the said fancier 

 years ago, I could never believe the pigeons in question were African 

 owls. In 183S he would be about twenty years of age, and his elder 

 brother, who was not a seafaring man, having occasion to make a voyage 

 to the Baltic, brought home with him some coloured-tailed white owls, 

 regarding which a Danish gentleman said that he doubted if they were 

 up to the standard of an English turbit. No one seeming to caro for 

 some that he had imjiorted, he returned them. 



So much for the pigeons imported into Dundee in 1838. They wore 

 doubtless the coloured-tailed white owls, which Messrs. Baily and Son 

 have often imported and sold as Meeves, I believe, and which bear about 

 the same relation to African owls that skinnums do to carriers. 



Only lately there was a notice of this breed in the Fanciers* Chronicle. 



It was about the year 1858, that the first pair of African owls known 

 to the present generation of British pigeon fanciers, was imported into 

 this country. They were exhibited at the Crystal Palace show by their 

 importer, Mr. E. V. Harcourt, and the description of them in The Field 

 newspaper of 22nd January, 1858, is the following : " Owls (all colours) 

 well represented ; but the best pair of owls in the show was certainly a 

 pair of whites, in the class for other varieties, under the name of ' Booz ' 

 pigeons from Tunis." Since then thousands of these beautiful pigeons 

 have been imported from the North of Africa, chiefly, I believe, from 

 Tunis. The late Mr. John Baily, jun., who, with his father, did a large 

 business in exporting and importing fancy pigeons, informed me that 

 these beautiful birds were bred, he understood, about the mosques in 

 Tunis, and allowed to pair together as they liked. If this is so, they 

 must certainly bo the only variety there, or the breed could not be kept 

 pure. As far as I know, no experienced fancier has yet visited Tunis, so 



