The English Pouter. 277 



quitted the fancy, and not been conversant therein during the interme- 

 diate time, waa to give his opinion now, he would be apt to condemn 

 them, for no other reason than because they are not like what used to 

 be thought good when he was in the fancy before ; for instance, the 

 powter was formerly bred with thin legs, and void of feathers on them, 

 which by the present fanciers are in no esteem, and called by them, 

 naked and wire-legg'd, who now endeavour to breed them with strong 

 substantial limbs, and well feathered." 



One of the set of eight old oil paintings of fancy pigeons which I 

 am fortunate in having lately acquired, and which I have before referred 

 to, represents a magnificent black-pied pouter cock, of the kind the 

 above writer describes as having been fancied in Moore's time. Being 

 quite bare in limb, with the exception of a few very short feathers 

 down the outside of the leg, but with none whatever on the toes, I 

 think it, as well as the other pictures, must have been painted about 

 the time Moore wrote his book, for they are aU uniform, and evidently the 

 work of the same artist. The pictures representing the pigeons already 

 described being life size, I suppose that of the black-pied cock to be 

 the same, and although I have occasionally seen a bird in life standing as 

 high as he does, it has been bat seldom. He is 14jin. from the crown of 

 his head to the soles of his feet, and must have measured about 20in. 

 in feather. He is short of bib, and his rose pinion might have been 

 dressed, had the artist meant to depict a well-marked pigeon. I 

 think, for this reason, the picture is a portrait. I can scarcely believe 

 that such a pigeon could have been produced, in the way Moore says, 

 under half a century at least, for the immense crop and intricate 

 marking would alone take long to fix after a cross with the horseman, 

 and then, Willughby's description of the pouter, such as it is, written 

 about sixty years before Moore's, is extant. At the same time, when a 

 drawing of a model pouter is made, quite devoid of crop, there can be 

 seen in it much of the shape of the thoroughbred carrier, as anyone 

 may prove for himself, so that it is extremely likely that the union of 

 such a bird as Moore's Dutch cropper and the carrier would result, after 

 a long careful breeding, in such a bird as the English pouter. We find 

 that, with age, certain pouters develope a good deal of beak and eye- 

 wattle, though birds of the same family vary greatly in this respect. 

 If this be not derived from a remote cross of the carrier, either direct or 



