248 Fancy Pigeons. 



good Bpeoimens are Tory valuable, and I believe the sum of ^£100 has 

 been paid on at least three occasions for a fine apeeimen of this breed. 

 Its name is, without doubt, derived from the use made of it when first 

 introduced into this country, the same having been retained when it 

 became strictly a fancier's pigeon. Its sub-varieties, the horseman and 

 dragoon — names which also clearly show their origin — were the birds 

 mostly used in Moore's time as homing pigeons, but it was merely 

 because carriers were too valuable " to risque their being lost upon every 

 trifling wager," as he plainly says, and not that they were incapable 

 of homing a good distance, for, says he, "such is the admirable Cunning, 

 or Sagacity of this Bird, that tho' you carry 'em Hood-winkt, twenty or 

 thirty Miles, nay I have known 'em to be carried three-acore or a 

 hundred, and there turn'd loose, they will immediately hasten to the Place 

 where they were bred." When Moore has written this regarding the 

 pure carriers of his day, we must come to the conclusion that they were 

 not so developed in fancy points as they now are, or, that such as could 

 fly sixty to a hundred miles were either comparatively young ones, or old 

 ones which had never made up much in beak and eye-wattle. There 

 can be no reasonable doubt that the carrier is descended from the same 

 stock, as has been used for many ages in the East as messenger pigeons, 

 and that whatever it might be capable of doing now, its near relatives, 

 both in this country and on the continent of Europe, are the pigeons 

 ■capable above all others of homing from great distances. We have no 

 means of knowing when the originals of our fancy carriers were first 

 brought into England. It may have been about the time of the Crusades, 

 but, from Moore's succinct account, it is probable that the breed was of 

 no long standing in London when he wrote, and that his words, already 

 quoted, may have been handed down through only a few generations of 

 fanciers. From the fact of pigeons having been used as messengers from 

 the time of Anacreon, who wrote about 520 B.C., and from the fact of a 

 long-faced, heavUy-beak and eye-wattled breed, being the foundation 

 of the highest developed type of homing pigeon, we may assume that 

 such a breed has existed from the time when this country was only 

 inhabited by a race of uncivilised nomads. As, however, ethnologists 

 tell us that the tide of the human race has been ever Westward, our 

 ancestors may have only given up the carrier fancy in the East, to resume 

 it in these later days in the West. 



